


The Sled Dog Guy Mystery

by bomberqueen17



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: AU, Bodhi POV, Earth AU, K2 is a dog, M/M, Winter driving, baze and chirrut are married, casual offhand racism tw, mild hypothermia, small town Americana, small town life, truck driver Bodhi, was supposed to be fluff but really isn't, you know what that means
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-04-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 19:17:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 38,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9672494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: Bodhi Rook is a delivery driver in a small town. He learns that nothing's what it really seems. For example, just because a man dresses like a sled dog musher doesn't mean that he really is one. And staying out of trouble isn't always an option.This was meant to be crack/fluff and has wound up being kind of an introspective study on Bodhi Rook. I'll handle him more gently than the movie did, at least.





	1. We Live In Hell Now

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote a whole bunch of this before the disaster trash fire that has been the assumption of power by the 45th President of the US. This would have been a whole boatload more urgent and poignant in that context-- a brown Muslim and a Mexican in a small town, now that we live in a world where the customs and immigration apparatus can randomly decide whether or not the US Constitution applies?-- but I had already written it, and am utterly undone at the prospect of trying to encompass current events in real life, let alone trying to extend them into the kind of coherent framework I'd need to underpin a work of fiction.  
> Maybe I'll do another draft of this as an original work that could take some of that into account, someday. In the meantime, here it stands, kind of an AU of an AU, or maybe we can just tell ourselves this takes place in late December or early January of 2017 when reality hadn't yet warped like that.  
> The terror is all wound through it, though, as I've tried to stay consistent but spent my nights sleepless worrying about the world. We will see how it all shakes out, and whether I'll update this or not, or leave it as an artifact of this time period.  
> In the meantime:  
> This story is kind of about nothing, and kind of about everything, and the terror really does wind all through it, but I did intend it to be fluff.
> 
> [I put a spoilery warning in the end notes about the use of the stereotype of Mexican drug-smugglers, as well. It's kind of the whole plot twist, but I think it might be important to know, so. It's at the end.]

 

Bodhi Rook sat in his delivery van watching the defrosters and wipers try and fail to make any appreciable dent in the frost on his windscreen. He was trying to update his logbook but his fingers were too cold to properly hold the stylus, and he was approaching a crisis point of existential despair as he realized that the frost was on the _inside_ and so the wipers weren’t going to do a bloody _thing_ , now, _were_ they, and what was the point of continuing to live in this _godforsaken wasteland_ \-- but there was no real heat behind it, because there was really no heat in anything, and he was a kind of dried-out shriveled-up husk of a human, now, wasn’t he.

Into that spiral of mental non-function came a sudden interruption, that of his unlocked passenger door suddenly opening and closing, and a man got in with a burst of cold air, startling because it was already fucking freezing in this van, and it was only after he’d had this incredulous thought that it suddenly struck Bodhi that surely, he was being carjacked.

“Shit,” Bodhi said, staring at the man, who was wearing a fur-hooded parka and giant gloves and looked something like a sled-dog-musher, only if he had sled dogs why was he carjacking a van-- of _course_ he would be carjacking a van, sled dogs were a horrible form of transportation surely, especially in a city?

“Shh,” the man said, “don’t mind me, I’m just hiding from someone.”

“I don’t have any money,” Bodhi said, something reasonable finally winding its way through his brain’s nonsensical chatter about sled dogs. The man looked at him, and Bodhi started to get mad that he was surely going to be shot to death over six dollars and twenty-three cents and a wrapped hummus and cheese sandwich, which were the entire contents of his messenger bag. Oh, and a smart tablet, but it was totally a proprietary one with like zero resale value. And his phone, he had a phone, but it was like, four years old and the camera was all scratched up. “I mean it! We’re not paid in cash for these jobs, I’m a delivery driver and it’s all billed remotely, it’s mostly paperwork, I don’t have anything--”

“I’m not mugging you,” the man said, and he had the nerve to sound offended; he wasn’t even looking at Bodhi, he was peering out the fogged window. “Jesus Christ! I’m just trying to avoid somebody seeing me!”

Bodhi stared at him. “What?”

“I’m not mugging you,” the man said, as if it were an outlandish suggestion. “Christ, just because I’m Mexican-- we don’t steal from _everybody_ , you know!”

“Now hold on one fucking minute,” Bodhi said, “you’re dressed like a fucking _sled-dog musher_ , I thought you were a local. I don’t know shit about Mexicans but the locals here are _fucking savages_ . But who the fuck leaps into people’s delivery vans and then _doesn’t_ carjack them? What the fuck kind of backwards hole is this goddamn place anyway?”

The sled-dog musher peered at him uncertainly, maybe a little incredulously, through the enormous fur fringe of his hood. “Oh,” he said, “you’re not from around here either.” He did have an accent, come to think of it, but so did Bodhi, as far as everyone around here was concerned. (Bodhi talked like a normal person, but nobody else here thought so. British English, _real_ English, was his native language and he was getting really fucking sick of explaining that.)

“No fucking _shit_ I’m not from around here,” Bodhi said. “I’m from _civilized places_ where you can park your van at the curb and not get accused of racism by random sled-dog mushers who just let themselves in and judge you for reacting to that like a person who knows they live in Hell now.”

The sled dog musher started laughing; through the ridiculous fur fringe Bodhi could make out that he had a long straight nose and dark eyes and there were crinkles around them like a nice person had. “This place _is_ hell, isn’t it? And horrible people live here.” He peered out the window. “I think he didn’t see me, but is it okay if I sit here a couple more minutes to make sure he isn’t waiting?”

“Now you ask,” Bodhi said. “ _Now_ you ask?”

“Well,” the man said. “I mean, there wasn’t time to knock, I’d tried three other car door handles and they were all locked. I actually didn’t notice your engine was running until after I got in.”

“I can imagine the entire animal in your hood probably dampens the sound,” Bodhi said. “This is a work vehicle, I’m not allowed to take on passengers.” He looked glumly at the windscreen, which was still stubbornly coated in frost.

The sled dog guy looked, too, and said, “Oh shit, is that on the inside? Oh what a pain in the ass.”

“I don’t even know how to scrape that,” Bodhi said glumly. “The defrosters aren’t even making a dent. Why do I live in a place like this?”

“Why _do_ you?” Sled Dog Guy asked.

“It’s a long story,” Bodhi said. “And I mean. Don’t get me wrong, I’m from England, it’s not like I’m some wilting tropical flower, but like. It should rain in winter and have a bit of ice, maybe an inch of snow now and then for the aesthetic of it, not do _this_ for six straight months.” He gestured at the impenetrable frost. “Humans shouldn’t live in this.”

“Where I’m from it doesn’t freeze,” Sled Dog Guy said. “That’s much more reasonable than this.” He kicked his feet around, found the ice scraping brush thing, which Bodhi had chucked over on the floor there. He picked it up and started scraping at the inside of the windshield. “This is bullshit, humans shouldn’t live like this.”

“It never freezes in Mexico?” Bodhi asked. “How did I not know that?”

“I mean, in some parts it does,” Sled Dog Guy said. “Just-- not where _I’m_ from.” He shot Bodhi a sly look. “It’s a big country.”

“No doubt,” Bodhi said, who knew basically nothing about Mexico. He grimaced at the way the scraper was just leaving narrow little marks in the frost and not really removing enough of it to be useful. “That’s just plain not going to work, now is it?”

“Sometimes you just have to believe in yourself,” Sled Dog Guy said, redoubling his efforts. Little flakes of frost were falling onto the dashboard, and you really still couldn’t see out the windscreen at all.

“I don’t see how self-confidence is going to melt that ice,” Bodhi said.

“Oh,” Sled Dog Guy said, shooting him an unexpectedly charming crinkle-eyed look, “you’d be amazed what self-confidence can do.”

“Mostly, terrible things,” Bodhi said. “It generally hasn’t worked out for me, you know. Okay, I have to ask, where do you even get a parka like that?”

Sled Dog Guy kept scraping, and gave him a look. “I bought it in a store,” he said, “I don’t remember, but you know, that’s an amazing hat.”

“I know it is,” Bodhi said. “My neighbor gave it to me.” It was an absurd piece of knitwear, a visual assault with ear flaps and a crowning pom-pom, in a stunning colorway of variegated yarn, and it was the only winter hat Bodhi owned. Sled Dog Guy stopped scraping and stared at him for a moment.  
“Does your neighbor hate you?” Sled Dog Guy asked, and resumed scraping. He was, improbably, making progress, but he’d probably be making just about the same progress using a toothpick. Somehow despite the broad flat end on the ice scraper, it had only a couple of points of contact with the smooth surface of the glass, and was approximately the least effective possible tool for this job. It worked fine on the outside but Bodhi supposed the curvature was opposite. Sled Dog Guy didn’t seem to care.

“No, no,” Bodhi said, “my neighbor’s quite sweet, but, well. He is blind. I don’t think he understood what this hat actually looked like.”

Sled Dog Guy laughed, and scraped some more. “I’m getting there,” he pointed out.

“The defrosters are finally working because the engine’s warm,” Bodhi pointed out.

“Hush,” Sled Dog Guy said, and laughed. He sat back, holding the ice scraper, and looked over at Bodhi. “Are you colorblind?” he asked.

“No,” Bodhi said, “I’m aware it’s hideous, I didn’t exactly prepare for the weather when I moved here. That’s why I’m asking where you got that parka.”

“I wish I remembered,” Sled Dog Guy said. “It was fucking expensive but I spend a lot of time outdoors and this climate is no joke.” He put the ice scraper down and gestured to the windscreen. “See, look, there, I helped you, maybe that makes up for me scaring you when I burst in here.”

Bodhi looked skeptically at the mostly-defrosted windscreen. “Those marks are going to be there until the end of time,” he said.

“True,” Sled Dog Guy said. “Isn’t that the worst? Stuff on the inside of the windshield never comes off. If you breathe wrong it leaves a mark and then you try to clean it and it’s worse.”

“At least I don’t always drive this van,” Bodhi said, looking on the bright side.

“Good,” Sled Dog Guy said. He put the ice scraper down. “Hey, thanks for letting me hide in here, it’s been fun, I gotta go.”

“Anytime, I guess,” Bodhi said. “Stay warm.”

“You too,” Sled Dog Guy said. He reached over and shook hands with Bodhi, a firm grip inside enormous gloves. Bodhi got his first fleeting good look at the man’s face: youngish, paleish-skinned, very dark eyes, little moustache and goatee not particularly well-trimmed but not shaggy either, and a kind of sly, lively intelligence to his look. “See you around.”

“Sure,” Bodhi said, and it was only after the man got out and shut the door behind him and vanished immediately behind the frost still on the windows that he thought, _should’ve got his number_.

Not, like. For anything creepy or like. Dating or whatever. Bodhi wasn’t here to do that. He just--

Never mind.

 

__________

 

Every time he saw someone in a parka with a fur-lined hood Bodhi had to fight with himself not to run up and see if it was Sled Dog Guy. He hadn’t even gotten a good look at the fellow, didn’t know if he was tall or short, heavyset or slim. The weather eased up a little, and it wasn’t above freezing but at least it was in the vicinity-- and Bodhi had never in his life imagined that he would step outside into twenty-nine-degree Fahrenheit weather and breathe a sigh of relief (let’s be real here, Fahrenheit temperatures had never played much of a role in his self-image)-- and the biggest relief of all of it was that fewer people had fur-lined parkas on.

He managed to tell the story to humorous effect later, to cheer up another driver who’d had a bad scare with someone pulling a gun on him. “Oh,” Bodhi said, working up to the punchline, “no, the best part was when in apparent remorse he tried to scrape the ice off the inside of the windscreen for me.”

“Is that why van fifteen has all those fucking lines when the windshield fogs up?” Rob said, and Pam the dispatcher hooted with laughter, which was what Bodhi had been going for. The traumatized driver, a skinny quiet guy called Jim who was still a bit shaky, managed a ghost of a laugh too.

“Yeah, that’s from him,” Bodhi said. “My weird sled dog driving Mexican. And maybe _that’s_ the punchline, really, that I know he was Mexican because he accused me of being racist against Mexicans, but I don’t know what he looked like or what his name was.”

“Wait,” Rob said, “can you even _be_ racist?”

Bodhi was sort of used to this by now, and rolled his eyes. “Anybody can be racist,” he said. “There’s no, like, get out of jail free card.” Basically everyone else who worked here had been born here and, crucially, had never left here, so if you took their horrifying ignorance with a grain of salt, well-- it was still horrifying, but at least it was born of genuine ignorance, though there was generally a healthy dose of wilful ignorance layered over the top that was harder to stomach from some than others. Rob and Ben had a running joke where they called Bodhi “Mohammed”, which was sort of amusing because they had no genuine context to work from and didn't get what his actual name meant. [Occasionally Bodhi got revenge by calling them each other's names and pretending he genuinely couldn't tell them apart.] Pam still couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that Bodhi’s native language was English; she seemed to have some belief that language was an innate genetic thing and not environmental. As well as zero understanding of the history of British involvement in South Asia, but that was something that eluded a lot of people and therefore was less startling.

“If you’re going to be racist against somebody it might as well be Mexicans,” Rob said.

“Let’s not,” Bodhi said immediately. “Like, you do what you want, but let’s, collectively, not.”

Sled Dog Musher hadn’t been crazy, was the thing. People around here were being assholes about the entire concept of Mexicans specifically, lately. There’d been a lot in the news about Mexican drug cartels contributing to the epidemic rise of addiction and overdose, locally, and there was just a lot of bullshit about it. Bodhi and wasn’t exactly relieved by it; you’d think it’d take some of the pressure off the shit he got subjected to, but he figured the rising tide lifting all boats principle applied to bad things as well as good.  If he ever saw Sled Dog Guy again he’d have to tell him that one, though: it was a good metaphor.

Not that he had enough to go on to see Sled Dog Guy again, but still.

After some more conversation and general shooting of the shit, Jim got himself together, and went out on his next run; Bodhi was left to deal with his somewhat shaken reaction to the revelation that half his coworkers had concealed-carry handguns, most with relevant licenses but some without. He started checking that the van doors were locked, though.

 

 

Which got him locked out of his van, when he reflexively flipped the lock switch without making sure the keys were in his pocket. He realized instantly, and stood there a moment staring at the door, which had just finished closing with a thump. “Fuck,” he said. He’d set the keys down to pick up the envelope he was supposed to deliver. That meant there was no cargo in the van, which meant the back door would be locked too, because he was conscientious about it now.

He went into the building and handed over the envelope, got the guy to sign for it, and said glumly, “Can I use your phone?”

 

Twenty minutes later he was sitting outside wondering how long it would take for his hands to be permanently damaged by frostbite, as Pam radioed around trying to find someone who could come bail him out. This was not the kind of establishment where they’d let him wait inside. There wasn’t a coffee shop within walking distance. There really wasn’t anything.

A car pulled up and a man got out and went inside without glancing at him. Bodhi avoided looking at him; sometimes people took that as aggressive. He blew on his hands, and thought about the fact that his phone was in the center console, also maybe dying of cold. Then he thought about how far behind this was going to put him today, and how much trouble he’d probably get in.

Well, it couldn’t be helped.

The door opened and, presumably, the same man came back out. He went back towards his car, but then paused, and Bodhi abandoned his no-eye-contact-to-avoid-perceived-aggression tactic in favor of making sure the guy wasn’t taking too pointed an interest in him.

“Hey,” the guy said. He was a slim-built guy, medium height, dark-haired, in a brown canvas jacket, nondescript, nobody Bodhi knew, but he was giving Bodhi a look like he’d seen him somewhere before. “Hey, I know you.”

“Do you,” Bodhi said politely.

The man pointed from Bodhi to his van, which was sitting at the curb. “I got into your van and you thought I was carjacking you.” And he made a gesture like with the ice scraper, laughing.

“Sled Dog Driving Mexican,” Bodhi said, before he could think better of it. “Everyone at work thinks it’s hilarious that I knew you were Mexican but literally nothing else about you, not even what you looked like.”

“Sled Dog,” Sled Dog Guy repeated, mystified, but he was still smiling. _Oh no_ , Bodhi thought. _He’s hot_. Without the obscuring frame of the furry hood, it was a lot easier to make out the fact that he had a really handsome narrow face, high cheekbones, slightly aquiline nose, round deep-set eyes with crinkled corners that gave him a mischievous look, really chiseled jaw-- yeah unfortunate. “Oh, the-- the coat.”

“Your parka,” Bodhi said. “I thought you probably mushed dogs for a living, and was wondering where one would park one’s dog team around here. I see you don’t have the parka or the dogs today.”

“No,” Sled Dog Guy said, “I _wish_ I had a team of sled dogs! But no, it’s not as cold today. I still wouldn’t be sitting on a bench outside, though, what are you doing? Where’s your great hat?”

Bodhi gestured at his van. “Locked out,” he said. “Waiting for the dispatcher to send someone else. Didn’t wear the hat because it wasn’t that cold today, but I regret it now.”

“Shit,” Sled Dog Guy said. He looked at the van, looked up and down the street, then sat down next to Bodhi and leaned in a little. “Electronic locks?”

“No,” Bodhi said, “mechanical, why?”

Sled Dog Guy chewed on his lip. “I could probably get that door open,” he said quietly. He glanced over at Bodhi again. “Would you tell anybody?”

“Well, I’d have to explain it,” Bodhi said.

“We can pretend I work for Triple A,” Sled Dog Guy said, leaning in conspiratorially. “I used to. That’s how I know I can do it. The ones with the electronic locks and the car alarms, no, but if it’s a mechanical lock, I can open it.”

“A Triple A truck happened by and the guy took pity on me,” Bodhi said.

“Sure,” Sled Dog Guy said. “What with the puppy dog eyes and all, you must get that a lot.”

Bodhi gave him an incredulous look. “I’m sorry, did you _forget_ the KKK has a branch office here? My coworkers have nicknamed me ISIS, I _assure_ you, they are not going to believe a random tow truck driver thought I was _cute_.”

Sled Dog Guy’s mouth flattened, at that, and he glanced away. “Tell ‘em someone called the cops and the cop let you in your car to shut up the neighbors,” he said grimly, and stood and went to his car, a nondescript sedan. He went directly to the van’s door instead of coming back to the bench that Bodhi was half-frozen to.

Bodhi managed to peel himself off the bench and half-jogged over. “Can you-- will it damage the door?” he asked anxiously, and in a moment, as his mind caught up, “Cops can unlock cars?” Of course they could. “Wait, did I do puppy dog eyes on you? I try to deploy them sparingly, they don’t normally work around here.”

“You’re goddamned adorable,” Sled Dog Guy said, deftly wriggling the tool into the top of the door. Before Bodhi could ask again if it would damage the door, there was a pop, and he pulled the door open and retrieved his tool. “Bingo. You’re welcome.”

Bodhi gaped at him. “Wh-- that’s it? That’s how easy it is?”

“You have to know how to do it and have the tool,” Sled Dog Guy said, waggling the-- whatever it was, Bodhi couldn’t really get a look at it-- and then stuffing it into his pocket. “Shh. I never did this. I was never here.” He winked appealingly, and turned to go.

“Wait,” Bodhi said, catching his arm. Sled Dog Guy paused, glancing back warily. “What’s your name? I can’t keep calling you Sled Dog Guy in my head, it doesn’t make sense without the parka.”

Sled Dog Guy broke out into a grin like the sun coming up. “Jeron,” he said, and held out his hand.

“Jeron,” Bodhi repeated, weirdly enchanted, and shook his hand. His skin was warm. “Like Geronimo?” he said.

“Exactly,” Jeron said, eyes widening and expression going soft with surprised pleasure. “Anyway. Now I’ve maybe made up for probably being the one who made you so paranoid you locked your keys in your van?”

“Oh,” Bodhi said, letting go of his hand belatedly-- it was warm, his hands were freezing-- “actually it wasn’t you, another of the drivers almost got mugged the other day.”

“Oh,” Jeron said, taken aback. “Well. Oh.”

Bodhi shrugged. “Thanks anyway,” he said. “I can’t feel my hands.”

“Go,” Jeron said, “go, warm up!” He stepped back. “I’ll see you around.”

“Sure,” Bodhi said, and kicked himself for his cowardice as Jeron walked away and got into his car. Well, at least he had a name now.

 

________

 

Bodhi had a couple of crazy neighbors, both East Asians of some stripe, probably Chinese. They were actually kind of the bright spot of his life, here. One of them was the blind guy who’d given him the hat. His name was Chirrut and he was both awesome and terrible. Being blind didn’t slow him down at all; he had an uncanny ability to hear everything that went on, and was the nosiest motherfucker who had ever existed. He knew more about Bodhi’s life than Bodhi did. He knew what Bodhi ate and how long he slept.

He was the only person in the entire world who actually cared even a little bit, so Bodhi didn’t really mind as much as he might have. Sometimes he felt like avoiding being Disapproved Of by Chirrut was the only reason he kept getting out of bed. He just couldn’t handle the way the guy gave him shit for deviating from routine too much.

So it was disconcerting but not really unexpected when Chirrut was on the sidewalk by the parking lot of the apartment complex, balancing on one foot and by all appearances auguring the future or something, the way he was staring fixedly at the treeline by the railroad tracks. The guy did Tai Chi or something out back like twice a day regardless of weather, and this seemed to be something along those lines too. For an old disabled guy, Chirrut was buff as hell, but even he couldn’t hold a torch to his roommate, a brick house of a man whose name Bodhi didn’t know. Chirrut had introduced him as “Grumpy” and he’d just sort of grunted and kept walking. He was an enormously well-built fellow, probably in his fifties, who had never so much as glanced at Bodhi. Bodhi wasn’t sure what was up with two middle-aged Asians rooming together in this shitty apartment complex in this awful small town in the middle of nowhere, but he wasn’t about to assume anything.

“Much warmer today!” Chirrut said, by way of greeting. Bodhi wasn’t sure if Chirrut could identify him by his walk or by his scent or spiritual vibrations or what, but he always knew who Bodhi was whether Bodhi spoke first or not.

“It was,” Bodhi said, “but you know, it didn’t help when I got locked out of my car for like half an hour and had to sit out in it.”

“And you didn’t wear your hat today,” Chirrut said, which was one of those eerie things. Did Bodhi’s hair sound different, or something? There was no explaining it. He put both feet on the ground and turned to walk with Bodhi toward the steps that led up to the building they both lived in.

“I didn’t,” Bodhi said. “You know, I regretted it. I definitely regretted it.”

“You know you’re allowed to get a different hat,” Chirrut said. “Baze yelled at me for giving you such an ugly hat. I knew it was probably ugly but I thought you were probably good-looking enough to pull it off. But it offends him; it must not suit you.”

“I don’t think I have the kind of looks where a brightly-colored hat is going to matter one way or the other,” Bodhi said, standing aside to let Chirrut take the hand-rail of the steps.

“He seems to think you do,” Chirrut said, which was disconcerting; Baze must be the giant fellow he lived with, who had never made eye contact with Bodhi or appeared to pay him any mind at all. “He has more of an eye for attractive young men than I do, though,” and he paused, facing Bodhi, and winked one cloudy eye.

This was the first time it had crossed Bodhi’s mind that Chirrut and Grumpy might actually be a couple. He wasn’t really sure why it hadn’t occurred to him before. This was the middle of nowhere, and there wasn’t much culture, or diversity, or anything really, but Bodhi supposed that it wasn’t actually required for there to be any particular population density before gay people could exist. And if you were as enormous as Baze, and as supremely lacking in fucks to give as Chirrut, then this was probably no more hostile a place than any for such a relationship.

“I hope that wasn’t offensive,” Chirrut said, and Bodhi realized he hadn’t said anything. There was a little bit of an edge to Chirrut’s question, though; Bodhi wasn’t sure what, but he suspected that Chirrut was resigning himself to Bodhi making something of it.

“Oh,” Bodhi said, “no, I just-- it’s not-- most people don’t put me in that category.” It wasn’t entirely true, but nobody here really looked at him, and he’d been here long enough that the more volatile bits of his memory had burned off and he wasn’t sure anymore what it was really like to be anywhere else.

“Well,” Chirrut said. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but I’m blind, so my categories are a little different.”

“Oh, you’re _blind_ ,” Bodhi said. “I wasn’t sure, I thought maybe you just hated sunglasses.” He kept his tone noncommittal, but Chirrut grinned at him.

“Baze hates it when I make jokes about that,” he said. “He’s a tender soul, you know. I have to bait him to keep him tough. It’s a crucial component of our relationship.”

“He, he looks very, yes, tender is what I would say,” Bodhi said. “Out of all the adjectives in the English language that’s what I’d pick, for him.”

“He has a very tender heart,” Chirrut said. “Things move him very deeply. Sometimes I wish I could protect him from the harshness of the world, but that’s not my role.” They reached the top of the stairs, and Chirrut reached out and put his hand against Bodhi’s chest, feeling for his shoulder so he could grab his arm. Normally Bodhi wouldn’t like being touched like that, but Chirrut was so graceful about it that he just let it happen. “Do you have time to stop in for a cup of tea? Baze is traveling for work and he made me promise I’d have a real conversation in person with someone before he came back.”

“Sure,” Bodhi said, “I’d love to.”

People didn’t drink tea around here, not the way he’d grown up doing. They’d bring you a cup of lukewarm water and a box of teabags in paper wrappings yellowed with age, and never any milk or sugar, and like half the time the teabags were all weird herbal flavors without caffeine. Bodhi had started drinking coffee out of sheer self-defense. It hadn’t been an easy transition but at least he’d managed to intensify his caffeine addiction to disgusting levels.

Promisingly, Chirrut had an electric kettle. His apartment looked much like Bodhi’s, in layout at least, but it clearly had occupants more dedicated to living in style; there was all kinds of art on the wall, the furniture was carefully arranged. “Oh, there’s a light switch on the wall, probably to the left I think,” Chirrut said. “I don’t know if it’s too dim in here; adjust the lighting to your preference, because of course I don’t care.”

“The sun is going down,” Bodhi said, and switched the light on, and with the light on he could see that there was a carpet in the middle of the sitting room floor, brightly-colored, extending just a little ways past the edges of the coffee table. Chirrut walked outdoors with a stick, not to lean on but to sweep for obstacles, and he did the same in the apartment. Now Bodhi could see that there were a lot of little carpets, here and there, and clearly they were partly decorative and partly functional as soft navigation aids for Chirrut, who would be able to feel them with his feet and know where he was precisely in the room.

But the telling detail, Bodhi thought, was that they were all different, clearly not all acquired at the same time, and yet all complementary, in harmony with the colors and designs of the other things in the room. Someone with an eye for design had furnished this whole place to be not only as beautiful as a cheap apartment in a cruddy building could be, but also as comfortable as possible for a blind man.

A lot of the art on the walls was textile, too-- soft things that you could brush your fingers against without dislodging them like you would a wooden or metal picture frame. It was all designed to be bumped into.

“Now,” Chirrut said, retrieving a decoratively-incised bowl of sugar from the cupboard and setting it on a tray on the counter, smoothly feeling with his fingers for where the edge was, “you sound to me like you’re from London?”

“London,” Bodhi confirmed, amused. “Yeah.” People here occasionally picked up ‘British’ from his accent, but mostly were puzzled by it, and basically nobody believed him when he explained he’d been born there.

“So you probably have opinions about tea,” Chirrut said. He went unerringly to a cupboard and pulled down an honest-to-god teapot.

"You sound to me like you're from somewhere that has opinions on tea as well," Bodhi said. He wasn't about to hazard a guess; Chirrut had perfectly fluent English with occasional artifacts around the edges of his syllables of an accent Bodhi wasn't familiar with.

"Hong Kong," Chirrut said, grinning. He had excellent teeth, and now that Bodhi looked more closely at him, he thought the man wasn't nearly as old as he'd initially thought. His initial impression had been based on the cane, now that he thought of it, and his own idea that a blind man must be very old. Chirrut had deep creases around his eyes, but his skin was still elastic; maybe he was as much as fifty, but he might not be.

"I used to have the kind of opinions on tea that I didn't think were opinions," Bodhi said. "Like, you know. The water has to boil, and the teabag probably shouldn't be older than I am. But now I'm learning those are actually pretty controversial."

Chirrut reached into the cupboard again, and produced two tins, both with stamped raised decorative patterns. "I've been here long enough that my standards aren't what they used to be," he said. "I make do with just green or black. So, green, or black?"

“Black,” Bodhi said. The tins were similar, matching, but had different designs, so Chirrut could tell by touch which was which.

Chirrut smiled to himself, and set about preparing the pot with the loose tea. “I won’t be boring and ask you how you got from London to here,” he said. “But I will ask you what you think of your job. Baze is very suspicious of that delivery service. He knew your boss from somewhere before, and thinks he’s up to no good-- he never did think much of Orson Krennic.”

“Oh,” Bodhi said, leaning against the counter, “Krennic’s absolutely up to no good. I’m absolutely sure that some of the deliveries are illegal things. I said to him quite plainly when I started that I would prefer to be left out of that sort of thing. I’m not sure I really am, but there’s not a lot of choice around here of where to work.” He grimaced, and looked over at the table, and noticed there was a little stack of notes on it, and a couple of little containers with weird assemblages of masking tape on the lids.

“And if you complained,” Chirrut said softly, “he would tell the police you’d been running drugs.”

“Well,” Bodhi said, and it clicked in his mind: the masking tape on the lids was dimensional. It looked like random shapes to him, but it was probably Chinese characters that, presumably, Chirrut had learned to read before he was blind. “I mean,” he said, looking back over at Chirrut. “Naturally.”

“That must mean, though,” Chirrut said thoughtfully, “that he’s got logs of all of it. If he can produce evidence against you to keep you from turning on him, he must have a thorough accounting of everything that goes on.”

The water boiled, and Chirrut poured it into the teapot. He really had everything laid out so that he knew where all of it was. Bodhi looked at the containers on the table, and thought about what was in them: he could see that they were pills, capsules, vitamins and such. And the notes-- the notes stacked on the table were folded, and Bodhi could see now that the containers had similar notes in them. They were written in what was probably Chinese characters, but then had been carefully punched through with some kind of stylus to make them, maybe, some kind of Braille, and it looked like a lot of effort and Bodhi realized that those containers had probably been prepared by Baze before he left, and those were love-notes or something, and it was almost too much for him to contemplate.

“Oh,” Bodhi said, letting his breath out in a long exhale. Nobody cared if he lived or died, and here someone had lovingly put all of Chirrut’s daily medications into tiny containers with labels he could feel and notes he could read, and had arranged carpets all over the floor to keep him from stubbing his toes, and what life choices would lead someone to something like that? “I mean. Yeah, he’s mad for records. I could probably find out all kinds of dirt, except there’s no one who’d believe me, and an awful lot of people who’d be pretty upset with me, and it’s not like I’d have anywhere safe to go afterward.” He shrugged. “I mean. I guess it’s mostly just drugs and money-laundering and stuff.” He shook his head. “It’s not like he’s running human trafficking rings or whatever.” He considered that. “Probably.”

“Probably,” Chirrut said. “Knowing Krennic, he might well be! It’s not like he’d be transporting them in _your_ van.”

Bodhi could feel his shoulders slumping over farther. “No, he wouldn’t be,” he said. “I think you’d need one of the ones without windows for that sort of thing.” He rubbed his face. “What am I even saying?”

“That you’re smuggling drugs,” Chirrut said, unperturbed. “And Krennic must be stopped.” He tilted his head. “You’d really have nowhere safe to go afterward?”

“Would I live here if I had pretty much any other choice?” Bodhi asked. Belatedly it occurred to him that Chirrut surely hadn’t wound up here by accident. “I mean. It’s not that here’s not. Uh. I’m sure it has its charms.”

Chirrut laughed. “Not really,” he said. “We sort of got washed up here too. But you’re a young man! Surely you have family?”

“I,” Bodhi said, “I mean. Technically, yes, but in practice, not so much. Not where it counts. They only want me if I’m someone I’m not, and I wasn’t willing to do that, and at this point pretty much the only motivating factor left in my life is spite, so I’ll die before I go crawling back and try to cram myself back into the space they wanted me to fit into.”

Chirrut closed his eyes and nodded very slowly. “I suppose I know what you mean,” he said. “That is a shame, though.”

“It is,” Bodhi said.

Chirrut pulled down teacups from the cupboard, haphazardly unmatched ones, and Bodhi held out his hands and remembered to say “Let me help?” instead of just making the gesture, and Chirrut waved him away and poured the tea unerringly through a strainer, but said, “Oh, could you get the milk from the refrigerator,” and Bodhi went and opened the door and saw that there were meals packed into small cardboard boxes with the lids cut off, with characters incised into the sides, presumably labels.

“He really-- does he go away a lot?” Bodhi wondered.

Chirrut shook his head. “Never,” he said, “and he has worried himself sick. I can cook, you know! Isn’t that ridiculous! He’s got breakfast cereals portioned out in there like I don’t pour myself a bowl of cereal just fine without him every morning of my entire life!”

Bodhi retrieved the milk, brought it over to the table, and came back to take the cups. Chirrut produced a packet of biscuits of some sort, and went over to the table, scuffing his feet ever so slightly so that he discovered the edge of the rug and knew where the chair was.

“So he’s usually here, though,” Bodhi said. “I suppose it’s understandable for him to worry, a little, if he’s not usually away from you.”

“I can pour my own cereal,” Chirrut said. “He knows that.” He sat back a little in the chair, and sighed. “But I know. It’s because he cares. And because he has an anxiety disorder, I think, that he won’t get diagnosed. He says he’s fine, the only thing he worries about is me, but he worries about me more than I strictly need.”

“Well you can tell him I’ll look in on you,” Bodhi said, “and you don’t have to tell him it’s because I’m so bored otherwise.”

“He’ll be delighted either way,” Chirrut said.

Bodhi shook his head slightly. “I’m trying to imagine what his delighted face looks like. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him have an expression.”

“He’s not…” Chirrut sat back a little, considering. “He’s not very publicly demonstrative. Have you ever even spoken to him, though?”

“No,” Bodhi admitted, laughing. “I’m mostly being silly. I’m sure he’s just as lovely as you say he is.”

“He is shy,” Chirrut said. “He likes people but he isn’t comfortable making their acquaintance. People think he’s mean, but he’s just trying to mind his own business and be polite.” He beamed, his teeth white and beautiful. “Fortunately for him, I do not have any such limitation. I don’t care if people think I’m rude, I’ve never minded my own business a day in my life.”

“I had noticed that,” Bodhi said.

“I might be blind,” Chirrut said, “but I don’t miss much.”

He had taken his cup of tea from Bodhi and put it down seemingly carelessly, but Bodhi could see now that he had it set down on top of a stain where another cup had been since the table was last wiped, and there was another stain where he put the spoon. Clearly everything had its habitual spot, and as long as everything was where it should be, everything was simple and easy to do. Chirrut often gestured as he talked, and the gestures were casual but were the same every time, and involved gently touching his surroundings: he was orienting himself, habitually, by touch. It was fascinating.

“Do you have any family locally?” Bodhi asked, which went against his policy of avoiding any mention of any kind of family at all, but he was just too curious.

Chirrut shook his head. “No,” he said, “neither of us is in contact with any branch of our family. A combination of many things, not least geography. We met as students, thirty years ago, and life has wound a strange and circuitous path since then.”

Bodhi added milk until his tea was the color he liked, then put the carton away when Chirrut declined it. “Strange and circuitous,” he said, sitting back down at the table. “I guess that sounds familiar.”

“Yes,” Chirrut said, “I imagine so.” He wrapped his fingers around his cup of tea. “Tell me more about Krennic’s smuggling business,” he said.

Bodhi shook his head slightly in wonder. “If you insist,” he said.

By the time he let himself into his dark, cold, empty apartment, it was quite late, and he was buzzing with the idea that he could do something instead of just keeping his head down and trying to avoid involving himself.

Of course, by the time he woke up the next morning, he was back to the bleak realization that there was nothing really he could do, unless he was willing to go to prison too. But it had been nice to think about something different for a little while, at least.


	2. Not A Sled Dog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plot thickens.

_____________

 

Bodhi had really thought he was over the seeing-every-fur-lined-hood-as-belonging-to-Sled-Dog-Guy phase but he was putting gas in his car on his way home from work and the guy at the next pump had a fur-lined hood in his parka and also a narrow build and characteristic slouch, and when he turned his head his nose had just the slightest hook to it. Before he could think better of it, Bodhi said, “Jeron?”

The man didn’t react for an instant, but then turned his head toward Bodhi, and it  _ was _ him, brow furrowed for a moment before he caught sight of Bodhi’s stupid hat and lit up. It had gotten cold again; they were both back in their cold weather gear.

“Bodhi,” he said, and pronounced it wrong, and Bodhi laughed. He’d never told the man his name, and the man had never asked, but Bodhi knew his ID badge was always somewhere around, either around his neck or hanging in the van. Clearly, he’d never asked because he’d seen the badge.

“It’s pronounced Bodhi, actually,” Bodhi said, “but I know it doesn’t look like it.”

Jeron drew himself up, looking offended. “I have,” he said, with indignant precision, “an accent.”

“Fair,” Bodhi said, “but you can say Bodhi.”

“I can say Bodhi,” Jeron said, deflating. “I forgot I’d only read it. That must have seemed creepy of me.” The pump clicked off and Bodhi put it away and hit the button so it wouldn’t spit out the receipt, and came over and offered Jeron a fist-bump in greeting, which people here didn’t usually see as too weird. Jeron took it easily, grinning.

“No,” Bodhi said, “you get really used to people just reading your ID badge, but in my case what that gets you used to is having to correct them on pronouncing your name, really.”

Jeron laughed. “I bet,” he said. “Hey, where you on your way to?”

Bodhi shrugged. “Going home,” he said. Jeron was putting gas into a large, battered pickup truck. “Done for the night. You?”

Jeron rolled his eyes. “Boss’s truck,” he said. “Gassing it up for tomorrow. I’m off the rest of the night, though. I don’t want to be weird but do you want to hang out?”

“Hang out,” Bodhi said, surprised. He couldn’t imagine being good enough at socializing to just-- come out with something like that. “I’d love to.”

“Great,” Jeron said. “I’m not from around here, as you might have guessed, and my coworkers are assholes, and I have literally twelve roommates and half of them are drunk at any given time and the eleven of them are all related to each other, and I don’t have any goddamn friends around here, and I just want to hang out with someone who isn’t fucking drunk, you know?”

“Those sound like exacting standards,” Bodhi said. “I’m not sure I can meet them.” 

Jeron laughed. “I mean it nicely,” he said. 

“I’m not taking it badly,” Bodhi said. “I don’t have any friends here either, I know exactly what you mean.”

“That’s a relief,” Jeron said, leaning against the side of the filthy pickup for a moment. “Uh,” he said, realizing what he’d said. “I mean. That your reaction wasn’t that I’m a weirdo loser, not that-- You know.”

“I do,” Bodhi said. “I know what you mean. But, I mean. What do people do around here?”

“Good question,” Jeron said. His pump finally clicked off, and he made a face as he stuck the handle back in the slot for it. He made a face. “Gotta go inside and get the change, this isn’t the kind of job where they give you a corporate card.”

Bodhi walked with him across the parking lot to the convenience store to collect the refund on having prepaid cash at the pump. “Here’s my thing, I haven’t yet figured out what it is that people do for fun around here besides go to bars or hang out at each other’s houses.”

Jeron laughed. “Me neither,” he said, “and I don’t make enough money to go hang out at the decent bars, and the cheap bars aren’t worth being at.”

“Right?” Bodhi shook his head. “The kind of bars I can afford to go to, they’d beat me up just for setting foot into.”

“I have gone to a lot of school plays and church functions,” Jeron confessed. “I thought I could, like, get a feel for the local culture or something, but man. I severely underestimated how bad of actors kids are.”

“I haven’t sunk that low,” Bodhi said. Jeron went straight to the counter and collected his refund. He didn’t speak to the clerk, only gestured, but the surly middle-aged man caught his drift, probably had been waiting for him. Bodhi had been considering picking up a soft drink or something, but the lottery scratch-offs were looming too large in his consciousness for him to think clearly about anything else, so he turned his head away and thought about how he didn’t want to feed that beast, and Jeron gave him a puzzled look and stepped back out the door. 

Bodhi followed him, shaking his head a little. “I mean,” he said, “there’s always sitting in a diner for way too long until the waitress gets pissed off.”

Jeron laughed. “I can probably spring for that,” he said. 

“There’s that place up on thirty,” Bodhi said. “It’s a Tuesday, isn’t it? Nobody cares if you take up a table on a Tuesday.”

“Thirty by where?” Jeron asked, carefully filing the money and receipt in an envelope in his wallet. “Oh, I think I know what you mean.” He frowned. “Yeah, that’d be fine. Kind of a hike, though, isn’t it?”

“I can drive,” Bodhi said, “if you don’t want to put too many miles on the boss’s truck.”

“Oh,” Jeron said, “it’s not th-- well, I mean. Actually, yeah, he’s gonna have me write the mileage down in the logbook and he might notice, he knows where I live and knows it’s not that far.”

“Just pull the truck over into one of the spaces,” Bodhi said. He went and started his car, and cleared the reasonable amount of junk out of the passenger’s seat in his car, and Jeron parked the truck around back and came and got in. 

“You lived here long?” Jeron asked.

“Long enough,” Bodhi said. “It took me a while to get the hang of how the streets are, here. I’ve never lived anywhere this… rural.”

Jeron laughed. “I have,” he said, “but this is up there.”

“You travel a lot?” Bodhi asked. 

Jeron adjusted his seat belt and pushed the car seat back slightly. “Yeah,” he said. “I used to.” He turned his face toward Bodhi, illuminated in the brightness of the light-up sign by the road with the convenience store’s gas prices. The white light traced the edge of one high cheekbone, and caught the edge of his eyebrow. Bodhi waited for an enormous gravel truck to trundle by in the opposite direction, then made the turn onto the road. Going to that diner meant he’d have to come back by this way, more or less, on his way home. “I’ve kind of gotten stuck here for a few months.”

Bodhi laughed hollowly. “Tell me about it.”

Jeron settled into his seat as Bodhi drove, craning his neck to look out the window. “So,” he said, after a moment. “Should we do the usual getting-to-know you shit? Or are we cool?”

“What, like, where’d you go to school and do our families know each other?” Bodhi asked drily. “ _ Not around here _ and  _ unlikely _ , are the answers I always wind up giving. I don’t wind up making friends easily around here because they don’t know what to do with that information.”

Jeron laughed. “Yeah, I keep striking out too,” he said. “Like, both with the locals and with the other Mexicans. Everyone else here is related somehow, I swear to Christ, it’s like I’m from the planet Mars or something. So the locals assume I don’t speak any English and if I talk to them it’s like I’m a talking dog, and then everyone else doesn’t care about me because I’m not related by marriage to the Hernandezes or whatever.”

“Really,” Bodhi said. “I guess I hadn’t thought about that. I figured everyone was equally far from home.”

“No,” Jeron said, “apparently not.”

“Huh,” Bodhi said.

“So,” Jeron said. “I don’t know if you’ve ever tried this? But I get tired of people making fun of my accent, right? So sometimes I pretend I don’t speak any English. There are a ton of people here who don’t know I can speak any English and I can’t even tell you what kind of golden comedy amusement I’ve obtained. Even other Mexicans! Some of them are just assholes.”

Bodhi laughed. “Really?” 

“Oh yeah,” Jeron said. “So if you see me-- we do keep running into each other, so maybe it’ll happen one of these times-- if you see me out somewhere there’s a chance everybody I’m with doesn’t know I speak any English. That’s why I had to think about it before I said yes to this diner, because I was trying to remember if I’d know anybody there.”

“That’s amazing,” Bodhi said, considering it. “And really-- they don’t-- are these people you see every day?”

“Oh yeah,” Jeron said.

“How do you keep it straight?” Bodhi asked. 

Jeron shook his head slightly. “It’s tricky,” he said. “But, well.” He sighed, and Bodhi glanced over at him. He looked a little sheepish. “You’re actually the only person in this town who I’ve spoken to in my real accent. Nobody else knows I’m fluent. Even my boss thinks my English is only so-so.”

“Really,” Bodhi said, astonished. “Isn’t that pretty far to go for a prank?”

Jeron laughed. “The only job he had going spare didn’t require English,” Jeron said. “So it’s not like he’d pay me more if he knew.” 

“Still, though,” Bodhi said. “Can you really get by here without any English at all?”

“Of course not,” Jeron said, “or I wouldn’t have let on to anybody.”

“You could really do that?” Bodhi asked. 

Jeron shrugged. “Here’s the extent of the getting-to-know-you bullshit I’ll do: I don’t have anybody left. My family died when I was little and I’ve been on my own since then. So I’m really used to keeping track of my own shit and reinventing myself if I have to. I guess I should be up-front with you about that-- I lie a lot, it’s just how I stay alive.”

“Oh,” Bodhi said. He supposed that was the kind of thing you should avoid, in people, but he couldn’t bring himself to be other than fascinated. “I mean. I’m alone in the world too but I guess I’m not as used to it.”

Jeron nodded slightly. “It’s,” he said, a little haltingly, “not necessarily something you really-- you get used to it but it doesn’t ever... “ He trailed off, and Bodhi looked at him when he next was safe to do so, rolling up to a stoplight. Jeron looked so wistful and sad, face crinkled up as he considered it. “I’m not naturally a liar but I live my life by lies, that’s just how I have to live.” He shrugged. “Does that make any sense?”

“It does,” Bodhi said. “I do a lot of lying by omission because explaining myself is too hard. I’m not a dishonest person, but I can only do so much.” He thought about his new idea, inspired by Chirrut, to try to undermine his boss’s smuggling activities. It was too risky; he couldn’t mention it. “I’m all right just being friends despite that, though, if you want. You don’t have to tell me everything or try to convince me I’m different.”

“I’ll try not to lie directly to you too much, though,” Jeron said. “Like-- my name’s not really Jeron, but everyone here calls me that so it’s just easier to go by it.”

“Oh,” Bodhi said, surprised. 

“I shouldn’t tell you that, and I won’t tell you any more,” Jeron said, “but it makes me feel better that someone knows it.”

“So really,” Bodhi said, “you’re a whole different person than anyone here knows.”

“That’s it exactly,” Jeron said. “And I knew when I got myself into this that it was going to be hard to do, but I didn’t think about how weird it was going to be, and how hard it is to be the only one who knows something important like that.”

“This is more metaphysical than I was prepared for it to be,” Bodhi said.

“Sorry,” Jeron said, dismayed. “We don’t-- I can take it back, still. I can tell you I was kidding.”

“No,” Bodhi said, “I like it.” He put his blinker on and waited for three cars to pass before making the left into the diner parking lot. “The only secrets I really have are because no one cares.”

“I’ll care, if you want,” Jeron offered. 

Bodhi laughed. “None of it really matters, though,” he said. “What good is it to know why I don’t have any contact with my family? They wanted me to be a surgeon and I hate literally everything about the medical field as a whole, and hated all the schooling too. None of them cared who I really was, they wanted me to be the person they’d imagined I would be. I could have rebelled in constructive ways, but I didn’t, I just dropped out of college and got a gambling addiction and vanished, as far as they’re concerned. I’m as good as dead, and they don’t care if I’m not.” 

“Ooh,” Jeron said, grimacing. “That’s a rough one.”

“I know,” Bodhi said, “believe me, I wish I’d just taken up heroin instead, but I didn’t have the foresight.” He turned the car off and sat, for a moment, hands in his lap, looking over at Jeron. “I pay my rent up front so if I have a lapse I don’t wind up homeless.” He shrugged. “The advantage of not knowing anybody is that I don’t borrow any money from anybody and get in trouble with it. It’s better this way.”

Jeron nodded. “I guess,” he said. 

Bodhi opened the door and got out. “Anyway,” he said, and shrugged. Jeron got out on his side, and stood for a moment, looking up at the warm yellow light of the diner’s front windows; it caught his sharp cheekbones, picked out the brightness of his eyes. Bodhi had a bad moment, worried that he’d said too much. But then Jeron came around and put his hand on Bodhi’s shoulder, shaking him gently and then walking past. 

It was the first time anyone had touched Bodhi in several days, and it went right through him and made him smile, though he couldn’t say why. 

The diner was just about empty. They sat in the booth in the far corner, away from the door, away from the windows, and Bodhi noticed that Jeron’s accent got thicker whenever the waitress was in earshot, and lightened after she moved away. He wasn’t entirely sure Jeron was aware that he was doing it. 

Jeron shed the parka, and hung it on the coat rack next to the booth. He was wearing a grimy hoodie, faded with washing, that had the name of one of the local high school sports teams across the front. Even through the bulk of the hoodie, Bodhi could see that he was slim and narrow-built, not much bigger than Bodhi himself was, and his wrists stuck out bony and slender past his sleeve-cuffs. His hair was shaggy, growing out of a short haircut, not long enough to be considered long, but not exactly tidy either, and his beard was sort of groomed but also didn’t exactly look intentional; it was shorter, in places, but none of his face was exactly clean-shaven. But Bodhi’s first impression, that he was an attractive guy, held true; he had a finely-cut jaw, and his high cheekbones were sharp like a model’s. 

Bodhi didn’t have a ton of romantic experience. He had a particular talent for forming crushes on people who couldn’t or wouldn’t requite them. He’d had a few assorted random low-intensity short-term relationships, here and there, with women, and a scant pair of encounters that could charitably be called hookups, with men, and he just wasn’t sure whether he had the right parts, emotionally, to have a proper relationship. This current interest in Jeron was probably the most intense crush he’d ever had, and it wasn’t likely to be requited in any reasonable way, so he had kind of resigned himself to just going along with whatever was suggested. 

Still, he was surprised by the way Jeron kept looking at him. In his experience people didn’t look at him like that very much. It was definitely an interested kind of look, but he wasn’t sure exactly what the nature of the interest was. 

He could feel himself getting more animated, talking louder, smiling wider, laughing harder. They didn’t talk about anything in particular, mostly commentary on the weather and being outsiders in this isolated area, and Jeron had a lot of really funny observations about his roommates’ irritating habits. 

“You don’t seriously have twelve roommates, though,” Bodhi said finally, taking advantage of Jeron’s pause to chew to interject. Jeron had perfect table manners, napkin in his lap and switching knife and fork hands American-style, and he’d talk with a little bit of food in his mouth but somehow managed never to be gross about it. Bodhi wasn’t a detective, but he would have placed a fair wager that despite having lost his family when he was young, Jeron hadn’t been cast out into the wilderness; he’d been raised by someone who’d taught him pretty high-class table manners. 

Jeron laughed. “Not at once,” he said. “But like. It’s a big old gross house and they’ve crammed as many of us as they can into it. My bedroom only has two other guys sleeping in it, but the house has, I’m not even kidding, twelve guys in it.”

“That sounds awful,” Bodhi said. 

Jeron sighed. “It could be worse,” he said. “Some of the guys are really conscientious. I’m sort of exaggerating. Some of those guys are really hard workers and decent kids and they deserve better.”

“What about you?” Bodhi asked. Jeron looked up, puzzled. “Don’t  _ you _ deserve better?”

Jeron’s expression went crooked, and he looked down. “I-- what I deserve is the kind of question I don’t know how to answer,” he said. 

“I think you’re probably a good person,” Bodhi said, leaning his elbow on the table and his chin on his hand. 

Jeron laughed, looking down and away sadly. “The only one who knows me and still really thinks I’m a good person is my dog,” he said. 

“You have a dog,” Bodhi said, surprised. He didn’t know much about dogs. He’d been joking about the sled dogs.

Jeron grinned. “I do,” he said. “Not a sled dog. He’s been with me a while. Few years.”

“Big dog?” Bodhi asked. “Or small dog?” He hadn’t envisioned Jeron as a dog person at all, and this was new information he didn’t know how to assimilate. “Please tell me he’s a tiny teacup thing that you carry around in your parka.”

Jeron laughed at that, so hard he threw his head back and rocked back in his seat, sharp shoulders angling in, arms curled, a full-body laugh. “No,” he said, when he could speak. “I can’t-- can you really imagine-- me with a tiny-- little dog in a--” He laughed so hard he sputtered. “In a  _ purse _ ! Can you see it!”

Bodhi was laughing almost too hard to speak too, but he managed to choke out, “Little kerchief on his neck,” and after a moment of wheezing, went on, “Color-coordinated to your outfit,” and Jeron lost what composure he’d managed to recover.

They both laughed for a long time, and when they’d finally stopped to catch their breath, Bodhi squeaked, “Collar matches your manicure,” and Jeron guffawed helplessly, looking at his long-fingered hands with battered knuckles, nails cut short, bruises on the one thumb, bandage wrapped around the index finger. 

“No,” he said finally, when they were both gasping and twitching in recovery, “no, he’s-- he’s a hundred and ten pounds, German Shepherd.”

“Really,” Bodhi said, then made himself laugh again. “Named Fifi!”

That set Jeron off, and they both laughed again until they were helpless. “No,” Jeron said finally. “His name is a stupid pun though.” He had to stop, and breathe. “You know how dogs are ca _ nines _ , right?” 

“Yeah,” Bodhi said, and he was watching how the exertion of laughing had pinked Jeron’s cheeks, bringing up some color under the pallor of winter-- he was pale-skinned, but not pink like the locals mostly were; he had gold undertones, like a tiny kiss of sun would make him really shine. He was stunning, he really was, and what’s more, he had good teeth, well taken care of in youth, straight and white like nobody raised in poverty would have unless they were insanely fortunate. 

“So-- he’s a failed police dog, he did some of the courses and he was just too much of an asshole,” Jeron went on. “So instead of a K-9, like they designate the dog units, he’s a K-2. Like, he fell  _ really _ short.”

“K-2,” Bodhi said. 

“I just call him Kay,” Jeron said, “most of the time. I think my roommates think his name is Cato.”

“Cato like the town?” Bodhi said.

“You’re not the first to ask that,” Jeron said. “There’s a town?”

Bodhi pulled out his phone and typed the name into the maps app. “Cayuga county,” he said, as it eventually came up. “Not far from Syracuse.”

“Huh,” Jeron said. “Maybe I’ll start telling people that one. Anyway, that’s really his name, though. Kay-two.”

“And he thinks you’re a good person,” Bodhi said. 

“Well,” Jeron said. “You know how dogs are.” He hiccuped out a stray giggle, and sat back in his seat again, sparkling with amusement. “He’s an asshole but of course I love him. He’s very clever, he can open doors and turn lights on and off and things. He wants me to teach him how to drive cars but of course I won’t, he can’t get a license. He can read, I think, but he can’t write, and you have to take a written test to get a license.”

“Surely he can’t read,” Bodhi said doubtfully. “I don’t know anything about dogs though so you could probably get me to believe it if you just doubled down on it.”

“He absolutely can read,” Jeron said, but his eyes were sparkling with mischief. “No, I’m fucking with you. But he knows a lot of words, more English ones than Spanish. He’s kind of too smart to be nice, you know?”

“Do dogs,” Bodhi said, baffled, “know-- words?”

“Commands, mostly,” Jeron said, and there was a shift in his demeanor-- he’d picked up that Bodhi was genuinely having trouble with whether he was telling the truth or exaggerating. Bodhi normally didn’t engage enough in conversations for people to figure it out, but he was approximately the most literal-minded person that existed, and he had real problems sometimes with knowing when people were serious. He certainly didn’t get this response often enough for it to matter. “Most dogs understand a handful of words, mostly commands but also things like  _ walk _ and  _ feed _ and  _ where _ and that kind of thing. Dogs are hard-wired to be social, so even pretty aloof ones will pick up on the noises humans make repetitively. So you can teach your dog  _ come, sit, stay, down _ , that kind of thing, even if you’re not a great dog trainer or your dog isn’t very smart.”

“Oh,” Bodhi said, nodding slowly. “Okay. Yeah, I know when I was a kid the neighbor’s dog would just go mad if you said the word  _ walk _ .”

“I can’t say it in front of Kaytoo,” Jeron said, “but I used to be able to say it in Spanish. He’s picked it up in the last couple of months and now I can’t say it. But he knows other stuff, too, loads of words and like, gestures-- if I pick up his harness it’s all over, I’m going to be  _ wearing _ him if I don’t hurry up and make with the walkies.”

Bodhi laughed at that image, though it was less intense than the laughter from earlier. “Like a matching scarf,” he said. “Does he match your parka?”

Jeron turned to regard the fur hood of his parka. “Oh no,” he said. “Nn… not… sort of.” He laughed, and turned back to Bodhi, amused and dismayed all in one. “Kind of! He’s brown and black. That’s-- I think that’s coyote fur, I really don’t know, it might not even be real.”

“So you have a parka that matches your dog,” Bodhi said. “I wasn’t far off.”

“Oh no,” Jeron said, a little wonderingly, with a helpless laugh. “I  _ do _ . That’s  _ awful _ .”

The waitress came over with the check, and Bodhi tried to pay it, and Jeron wouldn’t let him and wanted to pay it, and Bodhi said without really thinking, “I mean, the one who asks the other one on the date is supposed to pay, right?”

And, far from being fazed by it, Jeron said, “Well, properly, I asked, so I ought to,” and Bodhi had a moment of wondering if he meant that-- surely if this was a date he’d know-- before he finally convinced Jeron to split the check. 

Bodhi had been on dates. They had always been terrible. He had always been left wondering how much longer he had to be in this person’s company. The person had always been a woman, and it had always been because she was expecting him to be the person his parents wanted him to be. Sometimes she’d been funny, and likable, and he’d liked her, but he’d never felt-- like  _ this _ , anyway, whatever the fuck this was, and maybe it was just so intense because it had been such a long time since he’d laughed like that with anybody. 

In the car, he screwed up his courage, and said, “ _ Was _ that a date?”

Jeron made absolutely no sound, and after a moment Bodhi managed to look at him, and realized that he was literally holding his breath-- Jeron was literally holding his breath, sitting there with his shoulders up and his chest full and his lips rolled into his mouth, eyes scrunched into a narrow squint like a flinch. When Bodhi’s eyes met his, he breathed out harshly, and said, “Fuck, I don’t know, I can’t get a read on you, Bodhi,” and he pronounced it right this time. 

“You mean, you can’t tell if I’m gay or not,” Bodhi said carefully, glancing over at him and then away. 

Jeron bit his lip. “Yeah,” he said. 

“Join the club,” Bodhi said, and started the car. 

Jeron was silent for a moment, and Bodhi glanced over at him as he rolled up to the exit to the road. “Wait, what?” Jeron asked, hesitant and confused. 

“I don’t know either,” Bodhi said. “It’s not for want of trying, I just really don’t know.” 

Jeron stared at him, and Bodhi made the turn, got the car up to speed, glanced back over at him. It was dim, and Jeron’s face was lit only by the reflection of the headlights. “I don’t know what you mean,” Jeron said nervously. 

“I mean,” Bodhi said, “I’ve tried dating women and it was largely unrewarding, and I’ve tried hooking up with guys and it didn’t feel right either, and I’ve had about three conversations with you and have experienced more emotions from those three conversations than from all the dates etcetera I’ve been on in my life put together, so I don’t know what that means, but if you’re interested in me in any capacity at all I’m as down as it is possible for a human to be and I literally don’t care what it is that you want, I’m down.”

Jeron made a little laughing sound, incredulous, and said, “What, you don’t care?”

“I really don’t,” Bodhi said. “If you just want to hang out, I like that even if I’m going to always be nervous that I’m maybe staring at you too much.” He put the blinker on, waiting for the light. “If you want to like, hold hands or whatever, that’s fine, I’m okay at that, I’m not great at touching people but I’m fascinated enough by you that I’d be chill about it. If you want to-- you know, other stuff, make out or, like, fuck, if you’re into that, I’m game to try it. It’s not like that stuff doesn’t work for me, I just don’t always get what the deal is, but it’s not like I don’t like it and it’s not like I’m not interested. I am. I just-- don’t care, okay, I just want to-- interact, you know? I don’t care what the terms are.”

He managed to stop the torrent of words there, and they drove on in quiet for a moment, and when he glanced over, Jeron was staring at him, but he didn’t look upset or weirded-out or anything, he just looked like he was trying to figure out what that meant. “I’m not fucking with you,” Bodhi said, a little frustrated, “I’m just-- I’m weird, all right, and I’m not very good at people, and usually I don’t care but I want to-- _ whatever _ , whatever you want to do.”

“Oh,” Jeron said. “I-- can we, like, pull over and sit and talk about that for a minute?”

Bodhi mentally consulted his map. “In about half a mile there’s a turnoff that goes to a truck depot,” he said. “Nobody uses it after six pm.”

“Perfect,” Jeron said. After another moment he said, “How do you know that?”

“We deliver stuff there,” Bodhi said. He made himself continue. “I’m sorry if all of that weirded you out, my filter is worn out from being so weird for so long.”

“No,” Jeron said, “no, no, Bodhi, no, it’s not weird. You’re not weird.”

“That’s a damned lie,” Bodhi said, and sure enough, there was the turnoff. It wasn’t a paved road, it was gravel, but it was wide, and he pulled off far enough to be out of range of headlights from anyone else on the main road, and backed into a parking spot in the wide turnaround space a little ways from the road. 

He shut the engine off, and turned to Jeron. Jeron grinned at him.

“I don’t mean you’re not weird at all,” Jeron said. “I just mean, you’re not weird in a bad way.” It wasn’t a smug grin. It was a nervous grin, but it shaded a little, Bodhi thought, maybe too hopefully, toward fondness. “Listen, I, ah-- I hadn’t really-- thought this through. I just wanted to get a chance to know you, and like-- figure out if, or what, you might be into-- and try to figure out what I thought about it, you know? I mean-- you’re so--  _ you _ , and I-- it’s a lot, and I  _ want _ \-- but it’s so dangerous here.”

“Oh,” Bodhi said. He realized abruptly that he’d sort of hoped Jeron might make a pass at him, now that those cards were all on the table. Not that he was sure he wanted that, but it would be-- well, it would be welcome, which was kind of a change. 

“No no,” Jeron said, alarmed, “don’t-- don’t look like that, I don’t mean that I don’t--”

“I don’t know what I look like,” Bodhi said. “I’m not-- trying to look like anything, Jeron.”

“Well,” Jeron said, “the main thing is, I’m also--  _ into _ you, in some way, like,  _ a lot _ , I just-- I don’t know what’s actually a good idea and what’s me being really stupid.”

“Any port in a storm,” Bodhi said, trying desperately to dredge up some humor about it. 

“No,” Jeron said, and he reached over and took Bodhi’s hand between his. “No, not that. But-- Bodhi-- listen, I’ve just told you I’m lying about almost everything, I could never speak to you in public because most of the people who know me don’t even know that I have a language in common with you, and I’ve told you that I’m living under an assumed name-- I’m involved in a bunch of dangerous stuff-- I couldn’t be any good to you.”

Jeron’s hand was cold; he’d pulled his gloves off at some point, and his fingers were freezing and his knuckles were bony and his hands were not exactly shaking, but unsteady.

“I’m not asking you to marry me,” Bodhi said, “I’m just asking if you want to fuck or hold hands or just have conversations once in a while.”  _ I smuggle drugs for a living and am apparently considering the suicidal course of trying to change that _ , he thought, but didn’t say it. 

“I,” Jeron said, but was evidently defeated by that, and after a moment he let go of Bodhi’s hand and reached out to touch his face instead. He leaned over, and Bodhi figured out what was going on, and leaned in and kissed him.

He’d kissed enough people that he knew about how it went, but this differed in one crucial way, and that was that it sent this massive weird shiver zinging through his entire body, and he had to suck in a breath and put both hands on Jeron’s body-- shoulders? Waist? Neck? Whatever-- and kiss him deep and long and finally come up panting. 

“I think, I mean, if it’s really on offer, I’d definitely, you know, that first choice,” Jeron said, dazed. 

“Jesus Christ,” Bodhi said, shivering, “is this what that was supposed to feel like the whole time?” His heart was zipping along at a tremendous rate, and all the nerves of his face and hands were tingling. 

Jeron laughed, a soft incredulous little noise, and put his hand along the side of Bodhi’s face and kissed him again, softer, lips a soft pressure and tongue a wet slide. “You’re really something,” he said, his breath brushing warm across Bodhi’s face. 

Bodhi managed to peel his eyes open. He had the fingers of one hand twisted into the front of Jeron’s parka. “I mean,” he said, at a bit of a loss. “Yes?”

A soft, sweet, sort of wistful smile spread across Jeron’s face. “Oh, Bodhi,” he said. “I wish I deserved you.”

“I’m not some great prize,” Bodhi said. “I don’t know where you got that idea.”

“You are, though,” Jeron said. “Come here.”

Bodhi considered that perhaps he was too old for making out in the passenger seat of his shitty little sedan, but his whole body was tingling and it was also cold in here, so he climbed into Jeron’s lap and sat astride him and slid his hands inside that parka. 

Jeron was as skinny as he’d looked, inside the parka, and Bodhi got his hands under the sweatshirt too, found the softness of the skin of his sides, muscle and bone, no spare flesh there at all. But it was cold, even inside the car, even as hard as their hearts were beating, so their clothes stayed on, and their hands stayed mostly above the waist. 

“God,” Jeron said finally, panting as he came up for air, “God, we should stop, the windows are fogging up.”

“Yeah,” Bodhi said, and kissed him, because he couldn’t help it, he was dazed with it, how good it felt and how much he needed to keep touching him, tasting him, how good it was. He was really turned-on, his whole body buzzing pleasantly, and he couldn’t remember ever feeling this way. 

Jeron kissed him back for another little while, but then pulled away and pressed his forehead against Bodhi’s, holding him still. “We have to stop,” he said. “We have to. I can’t feel my feet and we have to keep moving.”

“Right,” Bodhi said, contrite, tugging at the fur around Jeron’s hood. “Right.” He laughed. “The insides of the windows are going to freeze up and you already know how poorly the scraper works for that.”

“I do,” Jeron said, laughing. He had his hands on Bodhi’s arms, holding him off a little, keeping Bodhi from kissing him again, and Bodhi’s mind caught up with his body a little, making him sit back.

“I really don’t want to stop,” Bodhi said.

“That’s because your legs aren’t numb,” Jeron said, and Bodhi laughed at that, and climbed back out of Jeron’s lap into his own seat. He started the car and turned the defrosters on. 

“We’ll have to take a rain check, I guess,” Bodhi said. 

“I can’t come back to your place,” Jeron said, “because it’s too dangerous, and you can’t come back to mine because I have twelve roommates and none of them know I speak good enough English to have a conversation with you.”

“It’s too dangerous?” Bodhi said, a little offended. “I don’t live in that bad a neighborhood.”

“I mean someone might see me go there,” Jeron said, “and assume you’re involved somehow in the dangerous shit I’m wrapped up in.”

“I probably already am,” Bodhi said. Time to confess. “I work for Krennic. Fuck knows what’s in those vans, half the time.”

Jeron looked over at him. The color was high in his cheeks, and his eyes were bright, but his expression went keen. “What do you know about Krennic’s operation?”

“Not much,” Bodhi said. “But I could find out a lot. He keeps very complete records and relies on all of us being too cowed to look too closely.”

Jeron stared at him, oddly intense. It struck Bodhi belatedly that he might work for one of Krennic’s competitors, or be involved in the man’s network, or something. Finally Jeron shook his head, grimacing. “No, Bodhi, don’t do that. It’s far too dangerous, I don’t think you quite realize what he’s involved in.”

“And you do?” Bodhi asked quietly.

Jeron bit his lower lip, looking like he’d swallowed something unpleasant. “I know more than I ought to,” he said. 

Bodhi fiddled with the defroster, and put his hands on the steering wheel. “Are you in on it?” he asked. 

“No,” Jeron said. “I’m not-- I mean, I’m not in charge of any of it. But I know-- who Krennic works for. I know-- too much.” 

“When I got locked out of the van,” Bodhi said, and couldn’t continue.

“I was there to pick up what you’d dropped off,” Jeron said. 

“My manifest said it was paperwork,” Bodhi said. “I don’t imagine it really was.”

“Money,” Jeron said. “For heroin.”

Bodhi nodded slowly. “Krennic has records of everything,” he said. “I’m sure he would turn me in and say I knew what was in that package if I tried to tell anyone about it.”

Jeron nodded. “You need to keep your head down,” he said. “Bodhi, don’t-- get involved. It’s not worth the risk. These men are killers.”

“We all die sometime,” Bodhi said. “I don’t want to right now, but I also don’t really have any choice. I don’t have anywhere else to go, Jeron. Am I supposed to just hope that nobody involves me?”

“It’s your best bet,” Jeron said. “Your only bet. Bodhi, I mean it. Pretend you don’t know anything.” 

Bodhi nodded, because it was easier than saying anything. “But that means I can’t let on to anyone that I know you,” he said. “Or you me.”

“No,” Jeron said. “We can-- we can still hang out but we have to… I don’t know. Go somewhere to do it.”

Bodhi laughed. “Next time I have to drop off some-- shit, drugs I guess-- and they’re sending you to pick them up, we should stop at a coffee shop first.”

“It’s not just drugs,” Jeron said quietly. He was looking at his hands. He glanced over at Bodhi. “What’s your-- immigration status?” He sounded reluctant to ask.

“Oh,” Bodhi said, “it’s all set, I don’t need the job, I have that sorted. I just-- don’t have a good work history. He doesn’t have me trapped with that, if that’s what you’re asking, I just can’t find another job so I’m stuck working for him if I want to eat. But I won’t get deported if I quit, he can’t turn me in or anything.” 

Jeron nodded to himself. “Most of the guys at my place are illegal to be here,” he said. “They’re all stuck. They can’t really do anything or get away.”

“You?” Bodhi asked. 

Jeron shook his head. “I’m-- good, but.” He looked down. “That doesn’t mean I can get away. Listen, don’t worry about me, though. I have a way out, if it comes to that. This isn’t-- my first rodeo, you know?”

Bodhi considered asking how many rodeos Jeron had been in. But it didn’t matter. None of it really mattered. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll have to take your word for it.” 

Jeron laughed humorlessly. “I know,” he said, “I told you I lie all the time, and I’m not telling you the truth about basically anything, and now you just have to trust me. It’s not a compelling case.”

Bodhi sighed. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Can I give you my phone number?”   
Jeron bit his lip again. “Yeah,” he said, “but I-- I can’t give you mine.” He looked uncertainly up at Bodhi. “If I have your number on me, someone could find it. I don’t think I can convey to you how badly I want nobody to be able to connect the two of us in case things go wrong.”

“No, I understand,” Bodhi said. 

“I know that’s not fair,” Jeron said. “I’ll try to contact you in a way that lets you write back. I’ll figure it out.”

“Sure,” Bodhi said. He pulled his little fuel mileage notebook out of his center console-- it was just force of habit now, to always write down when he got gas-- pulled a leaf out of it, and wrote down his number. “I don’t always pick up but I do read texts.”

“I’m more likely to be able to text,” Jeron said. “Nobody can tell if I’m doing that in English, you know?”

Bodhi laughed. The defrosters had finally kicked on, and the fog was clearing from the windshield. Jeron flipped on the map light and looked at the piece of paper with Bodhi’s number on it for a moment, before turning the light back off. Bodhi blinked, night vision ruined by that brief moment of light. 

“Hey,” Jeron said, after a moment, as Bodhi put his hand on the gearshift. 

Bodhi looked questioningly over at him. Jeron leaned in. “One last one? Until next time?”

Bodhi took his hand off the gear shift and leaned over to kiss him, marveling at how familiar it was already. 

“Yeah okay,” he said, finally pulling away, and put the car in gear.

 


	3. The Worst At Sexting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we finally address the hypothermia trope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Story's rating bumps up a little with this chapter!
> 
> Also: I have had a series of the most lovely conversations with [tojours_nigel](http://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel) on Bodhi's probable actual background-- while his actor, Riz Ahmed, is a British Muslim of Pakistani extraction, for various reasons Bodhi is a highly unlikely name for a Muslim to have, and this opened up some fascinating explorations into who _would_ have such a name, some of which is linked to in the end notes-- and also on what, precisely, would constitute comfort food for a person with the sort of background a man with Bodhi's name and accent would be likely to have, among other things. Any missteps remaining here are mine, and I have greatly enjoyed these conversations. 
> 
> (Baze and Chirrut's names, on the other hand... look, ok, I don't know, they're Space Chinese and I'll come up with something if pressed but in the meantime, it's outside the scope of the work. They have a backstory, and I don't know most of it but I am certain it's there.)

 

Bodhi stopped by to visit with Chirrut daily now, every day on his way to work. Chirrut’s husband (they were legally married, and had been since the second day it had been legal in this state, due to the 24-hour waiting period) left before Bodhi did, most mornings, so Bodhi had still not had a conversation with the man, but he had learned his name and that he and Chirrut hadn’t taken one another’s names because it had been too much hassle and was, Chirrut had said laughingly, kind of a weird American thing to do anyway. Bodhi had looked up Chinese naming conventions that night, on his phone, but had gotten so confused he’d just closed the browser and abandoned the attempt.

He went and knocked on the door, and Chirrut said, “Just a moment!” from somewhere deep within the apartment.

Bodhi leaned next to the door, unconcerned. “Uncle,” he said, knowing Chirrut could hear him (the man’s hearing was uncanny, but also he wore a sort of hearing-aid thing that he hadn’t really explained, and Bodhi was unwittingly fascinated and had spent hours one night researching assistive echo technology for the visually impaired). “Uncle, I have a story for you this time.” It had been a long time since there’d been anyone Bodhi had felt like he could call _uncle_ ; Chirrut had been amused the first time it had slipped out, but hadn’t objected, so it had stuck.

The door opened. “Is that so,” a voice said, and it wasn’t Chirrut at all, it was the husband of legend, who was six feet tall easily and loomed forbiddingly in the doorway.

“Oh,” Bodhi said, scrambling upright. “Uh, hello, sir, I, uh--”

The man gave him a once-over, forehead creased in contemplation. He was big, intimidatingly so, and forbidding, but as Bodhi got over his surprise, he noticed that the man wasn’t really frowning. “You must,” he said, “be Bodhi.” His accent was thicker than Chirrut’s, and different.

“Yes, sir,” Bodhi said. “Bodhi Rook.”

“The driver,” the man said. He seemed to reach a conclusion, and held out his hand. “Baze Malbus.”

Bodhi shook his hand, noticing that the man was dressed very casually, and clearly had the day off. “Well,” he said, thinking about the lovingly-labeled meals in cardboard boxes to contrast with the man’s forbidding aspect, “I’m glad to meet you.”

“You as well,” Baze said, standing back from the door. “Come in, please.” He gestured politely.

“Tell me the story,” Chirrut said, coming out from the kitchen.

“Oh,” Bodhi said. “I mean. It’s just stupid gossip.”

“Don’t mind me,” Baze said, and he didn’t quite smile, but his eyebrows quirked. “Do you want tea?”

“I don’t have time,” Bodhi said, “but thank you, I was just stopping in on my way, er, out.” As he said it, the phrasing struck him as awkward, but it was too late to amend it.

“ _I’ll_ have tea,” Chirrut said.

Baze looked at him, and did smile then, nearly-imperceptibly. He caught Bodhi’s look and rolled his eyes very slightly, clearly for Bodhi’s benefit. “Your last cup of tea isn’t yet cold,” Baze pointed out mildly.

“Isn’t it? I lose track,” Chirrut said, grinning blithely. “Anyway, Baze, Bodhi works for that awful Krennic, and he thinks he can find out more about the terrible things that man gets up to.”

Baze’s faint smile disappeared, and he furrowed his brow at Bodhi again. “Orson Krennic is a very dangerous man,” Baze said. “It’s not the sort of thing to get oneself involved in if one can at all avoid it.”

“He can’t really avoid it, now can he,” Chirrut said. “He’s working for the man, after all.”

Baze contemplated Bodhi for another moment, then went and filled the electric kettle and turned on the switch. “That was part of the story, a little,” Bodhi said. “I ran into the Mexican sled-dog driver again, do you remember me telling you about him?”

“Oh yes,” Chirrut said. “The one who can unlock car doors with the power of his mind.” And he turned unerringly toward Baze and winked.

Baze rolled his eyes again, a little, crossing his arms over his chest and settling with his back leaning against the counter. “Chirrut told me the story,” he said when Bodhi hesitated. “And yes, law enforcement often have the tools to unlock car doors.”

The phrase _law enforcement_ collided in Bodhi’s head with last night’s observations about Jeron’s teeth and table manners, and he wrapped all of that up into a small package and set it aside. “His name’s Jeron,” Bodhi said, “I don’t know if I told you that before-- like Jeronimo, I don’t know if it’s a nickname.”

“Jeronimo,” Baze said, giving the almost palpable impression that he was turning it over in his mind like a smooth stone, considering its surfaces.

“Yes, isn’t that interesting,” Chirrut said. “Did he explain any further why he can unlock doors?”

“Not really,” Bodhi said, “but we did have a good conversation.” He reminded himself that really anything he told Chirrut was going to be repeated to Baze anyway, so anything he’d been willing to tell Chirrut, he should be willing to say in front of both of them. But he still couldn’t bring himself to elaborate. “He had a number of interesting things to say about a great many topics, but the upshot is that we’re sort of friends now.” It was as true as anything, really.

Baze nodded thoughtfully, and now that Bodhi was a little bit used to them he could see that the man’s expression was pleasantly neutral, it was just that the heavy sweep of his forehead terminated by his eyebrow ridge made him look forbidding or disapproving. He wasn’t really frowning, his face was just shaped that way.

Chirrut, however, stepped closer to Bodhi, and lit up incomprehensibly. “He’s hot, isn’t he,” Chirrut said.

“What?” Bodhi blinked in complete confusion. He’d been considering Baze and had to mentally rewind the conversation to remember that he’d been talking about Jeron.

“Your sled dog driver,” Chirrut said. “I didn’t think you inclined that way, but either you’re attracted to him or frightened of him, I can’t tell which.”

“I think you’re reaching, a little, there,” Baze said, to Chirrut, and then added something in, presumably, Chinese.

Chirrut answered him, sounding indignant, just a couple of words, and went on, “He has no trust in my capabilities, haven’t I told you this?” to Bodhi.

“There _was_ an amusing diatribe about cereal,” Bodhi said. He pulled out his phone and glanced at the time. “I don’t have any more time to talk, but I’ll try later to figure out why you think I’m either attracted to or terrified about my sled dog friend. Oh! I did find out he really does have a dog, though! A big one, apparently. So there’s that bit of trivia to chew on. Anyway I have to get to work-- I’m stopping by the grocery store later to stock up before the storm and thought to ask if you needed anything, but if you’ve the day off you’re probably already planning on going in.”

Baze nodded. “That was on the list,” he said. “Thank you for asking, though. It eases my mind greatly to know we have such a considerate neighbor.”

“You know I can’t go two weeks without making new friends,” Chirrut said.

“I do know that,” Baze said. “It doesn’t make this one any less exceptionally nice.”

“That is true,” Chirrut said. “Thank you, Bodhi. I hope your day is pleasant.”

“Thanks,” Bodhi said, and made his exit.

 

At work that day he brought up the comedy duo of Baze and Chirrut, expecting that clearly, the two of them must be well-known local characters; quite apart from probably being the only Asians in town besides Bodhi himself and the old Korean couple who ran the dry cleaning store on Main street, they were a distinctive pair, and Chirrut was constitutionally disinterested in keeping his mouth shut at any time. But no one there had ever seen them, singly or together.

“I don’t think they’ve lived in town long,” Rob said finally. “I swear I’d remember a six-foot Chinaman.”

Bodhi managed not to cringe. He felt like probably nobody had actually used the phrase _Chinaman_ since about the 1880s, but, Rob wasn’t exactly up on that sort of thing. “I mean,” he said. “He’s pretty soft-spoken. It’s the blind one who’s most likely to stand out in a crowd.”

“I’ve never seen either of them,” Pam said, frowning.

“Oh,” Jim said, speaking up unexpectedly, “the blind one-- he teaches karate or something, I saw him do a demonstration at the school fair in the fall. Moo-shoo or something.” Jim had kids, Bodhi remembered; there was a lot of discussion of their various activities that were always a welcome relief from discussions of politics or international relations.

“How can a blind guy do karate?” Pam wondered.

Jim shrugged. “He was real good at it, whatever it was. It was like-- this ballet kinda thing. Looked like in the movies. Unreal.”

“He practices on the sidewalk of the apartment complex,” Bodhi said. “I wondered what that was. I thought it was like tai chi.”

“Oh I know what tai chi is,” Pam said. “It’s a thing like yoga. I took a class in it once. It was really nice. Really got the blood moving without makin’ you sweat too much.”

Bodhi nodded faintly: he supposed that was as good a descriptor as any of tai chi. Unbidden an image came to him suddenly, of Chirrut in a leotard and leg warmers like Jane Fonda, and he almost laughed out loud. “Well,” he said. “That’s interesting, I figured they’d lived here a long time.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Jim said. “I got the impression he’s a new addition at the karate studio or whatever, like he hadn’t been here long.”

Rob had opened his mouth and Bodhi was already steeling himself not to cringe at whatever came out, but Krennic suddenly swept in the door, stomping snow from his boots and drawing a forbidding gaze across each of them. “How long does a van really need to warm up before you can wipe the snow off it?” he asked Bodhi pointedly.

Bodhi blinked. “I,” he said, “a minute? Two? I usually sit and update the logbook while it’s warming up, sir, I don’t know.”

“Oh,” Rob said, “that’s-- I switched it on, that’s the one I’m taking.” He jumped up from the edge of Pam’s desk, where he’d been sitting.

“I can assure you,” Krennic said, “it’s warm enough.”

“I was just getting the paperwork together,” Rob said.

“Mm,” Krennic said, unimpressed, and looked at each of the others. “And the rest of you?”

Jim waggled the coffee pot in his hand, and Bodhi shook his head slightly, gesturing to where Rob had been sitting; he didn’t have his assignment yet, because Rob had been wasting Pam’s time and she hadn’t given it to him yet.

“Oh,” Pam said, and unhooked the clipboard from the wall. “I, ah, you’re going out to Zee’s.”

“Great,” Bodhi said. It was a tricky drive, with a winding road, and it was snowing blue blazes out today. He’d learned an enormous amount about driving in the snow so far this winter. “That’ll be an adventure.”

Krennic sniffed slightly, and went to go on down the hall, but Rob, who had the self-preservation instinct of a wet bar of soap, said, “Hey, boss, do you know a six-foot Chinaman named Chirp?”

“Chirp,” Krennic said, pausing to look down at him. Krennic wasn’t all that tall, but he had a gift for looking down at people.

“No, no,” Pam said, “it was-- Chirit, I think?”

Krennic stared at both of them. “No,” he said. “Should I?”

“I just feel like you’d notice somebody like that,” Rob said.

“Sometimes your thought processes baffle me,” Krennic said, and continued down the hallway toward his office.

Bodhi watched him go, and thought about that enormous bank of filing cabinets, and Krennic’s obsessive tidiness about them. Krennic was only observant about certain things, and those filing cabinets contained most of them.

 

____

 

Bodhi’s phone vibrated in his pocket, and he fished it out absently. He was exhausted, collapsed on his couch. Driving in snow made the day so goddamned long. It was a text message from an unknown number, and he frowned at it for a moment, but then remembered he’d given his number to Jeron.

 _Fuck this weather_ , the text said.

 _You can say that again_ , he wrote back.

After a moment, the phone lit up again. _This is J by the way,_ it said, and Bodhi spent a moment before figuring out that Jeron was probably spelled with a J if it was in Spanish. He’d been mentally spelling it with an H, but that wasn’t right, he knew.

 _I thought it was spelled with a G_ , he wrote, because that was funnier.

 _Like the Apache chief_ , Jeron wrote, then added, _jajaja_ , and that took Bodhi a minute.

 _I never studied Spanish_ , he wrote.

 _Never too late to start,_ Jeron shot back. _Lesson one: soft J_.

 _You are the worst at sexting_ , Bodhi said.

 _Wow you went there immediately!!!!!_ Jeron wrote.

 _You started it,_ Bodhi wrote back. Amusement gave him the strength to get up from the couch and put on a pot of rice to cook, at least. He had to eat something. He set the phone on the counter, and when he came back, Jeron had written again.

_I mean, if that’s where you want to go, I’m down, but, I think I’d rather meet in person for that sort of thing._

_Is that what this is?_ Bodhi wrote. _A booty call? I’ve never been anyone’s booty call before._

 _I have never called anyone’s boots,_  Jeron wrote back. A moment later he wrote, _*booty._

 _You’d better not be trying to convince me to drive anywhere,_  Bodhi wrote. _I drove over two hundred miles in this white bullshit today, I’m not getting back into my car until tomorrow morning._

 _No_ , Jeron wrote, _I’m not trying to get you to go anywhere. I’m already in bed with my giant dog lying on me, I know he won’t let me up for anything. I just wanted to write to give you this number, which should work for a couple of days at least._

 _Your dog sleeps on you_ , Bodhi wrote, trying to imagine it.

 _He takes up the whole bed_ , Cassian wrote back. _Hang on I’m gonna have my roommate take a picture._

Bodhi didn’t write back, not wanting to pop up a message obviously in English if someone else was going to be looking at the phone. He went and rummaged through his fridge. He had, in fact, gone shopping today, even though all he’d wanted to do was get home. The store had been deserted, as had the roads. It was pretty ugly out there.

He had some decent snack food, and now that he was off the couch he could actually face cooking some of it. Some of it wasn’t junk food; he opened up the pack of chicken sausages he’d bought, and threw one into the frying pan, and shoved the rest of the package back into the fridge. It wasn’t anything like how his mother had always cooked but at least it tasted like food.

Food was so goddamn fraught, here. He didn’t know how to cook anything he’d grown up with, didn’t know how to find the ingredients. He’d gotten sick, living off plain rice and junk food. Nothing tasted good to him. He’d had to trial-and-error learning how to cook basic things. But he didn’t know where to find familiar ingredients, so it was just easier to stick to chicken, out here in the wilderness of Jesusland. Fortunately, it seemed to be a health craze, so he could always find something.

He’d taught himself, from Internet searches and the helpful pamphlet from the nice lady at the farmer’s market, how to cook whole chickens. It was the cheapest form of easy protein he could reliably get, that didn’t taste disgusting to him. He’d bought one yesterday, but he was going to cook that on Saturday, and then cut it up for leftovers for the next week.

His phone buzzed, and he stirred the rice and turned the heat down before picking the phone up again.

It was a photo, sure enough, a little blurry, but it was clearly Jeron lying in a narrow bed with an enormous German Shepherd sprawled across him. Jeron was giving a thumbs-up, and the dog was regarding the camera with suspicion.

He was a really beautiful dog, though. Bodhi didn’t know anything about dogs, really, but this was a really striking, intelligent-looking animal, mostly black, with upright ears and unimpressed eyes. Jeron also looked pretty attractive, despite being somewhat tousled and with his face in an exaggerated wry pout.

 _Wait_ , Bodhi wrote back, _are you on the left or the right?_

 _Fuck you_ , Jeron sent.

 _Buy me dinner first_ , Bodhi wrote, because he did understand how this usually worked. He was really good at the flirting part, a lot less good at the parts where it got serious.

 _I tried!_ Jeron wrote back. _You wouldn’t let me pay!_

 _Oh yeah_ , Bodhi sent. He considered it. _Well, I’m not *that* easy._ Almost immediately he followed it up with _okay maybe I am but I’m trying to seem aloof, is it working?_

 _You’re doing great_ , Jeron assured him.

Bodhi laughed out loud, put the phone down, and finished cooking the sausage. The rice was done too. There should be vegetables but it was too much for him to contemplate. His mother had always made this seem easy, and had never taught him because he was supposed to have found a wife of his own by now. Sometimes he couldn’t deal, but tonight, abruptly, he was cheerful enough that it didn’t bother him.

He scraped it all onto a plate and took his phone back into the living room and wrapped himself back up in his blanket burrito to eat it. _Go on, ask me what i’m wearing right now_ , he wrote.

 _I have a feeling this is a trick question, but go on_ , Jeron wrote.

Bodhi stuck his arm out and managed to take a selfie of the blanket burrito. Bonus points, he supposed, that it was slightly blurry. _It’s fucking cold here_ , he wrote.

 _I am pretending that I am asleep so it is very inconvenient that you keep making me laugh_ , Jeron wrote. _As it is javier is really weirded out that i wanted him to take a picture of the way my dog is my blanket. He thinks I am some kind of terrifying badass and you’re making me blow my cover._

 _No lie I am jealous of how warm that dog probably is_ , Bodhi wrote. _Heat’s not included in my rent so I keep it real low and it is cold as fuck in here_.

 _Sorry man_ , Jeron wrote, _I got the snuggle hookup but it is cold as fuck in here too, don’t think for a second i’m living high on this hog._

Bodhi wolfed down the sausage like a crazy person. Shit, he was really hungry, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten actual real food instead of just-- whatever.

 _I hope you got unlimited texts on there man_ , he said, as it occurred to him.

 _I got enough, don’t worry_ , Jeron sent back. But then, _fuck, I ought to be asleep, I got a 5am start time tomorrow._

 _You ever get two days in a row off together_? Bodhi wrote, before he could think better of it.

 _I could probably arrange it_ , Jeron sent. _We could go somewhere?_

 _Doesn’t have to be anywhere fancy_ , Bodhi said. _Just somewhere it won’t matter if someone sees you with me_.

 _Yeah_ , Jeron wrote. A few moments passed, and Bodhi finished the rice on his plate, and set it aside, thinking about making more food. No, that was probably enough. _Text me where your dropoffs are tomorrow? Maybe we can meet up for a little bit during the day, make some plans?_

Bodhi considered it. _I don’t usually get my assignments real far in advance_ , he said. _But I’ll let you know when I know_.

 

_____

 

 _The roads are really bad,_ Bodhi sent to Jeron when he pulled over to scrape off his windshield. They were supposed to meet up, just for a few minutes, get a coffee at the convenience store and sit in one of their cars at the far end of the parking lot and plan their next escapade, and definitely not make out where someone might see them. _Don’t go out if you don’t have to._

He had to, so he knocked the snow off the wipers, cleared out the crusted ice around the edges of the windshield, scraped the troublesome spot where the defrosters didn’t reach, and then kicked at the mudflaps of the van to dislodge some of the thick crust of ice and salt that had collected in the wheel wells. He got back in, and checked his phone.

Jeron had written back _But I have to. Running abt 35 min behind sched. Real low on gas so I gotta make the rendezvous or the truck won’t make it home._

Bodhi checked his log. He wasn’t too far behind schedule because Pam was actually not a moron and had taken the weather into account with the assignments; he’d thought she was nuts to give him two hours for this run, but she was looking to be just about dead on. He radioed in. “Pretty bad out here,” he said.

“Is that Rook? Are you okay?” Pam asked.

“Yeah,” he said, “and yeah, but I’m gonna need every bit of those two hours and then some. Keep having to stop to deice the windows.”

“Just be safe,” Pam said. “National Weather Service says the wind might shift in a couple more hours but then it might not. If you get stuck somewhere you just keep us posted.”

“Yeah they’re basically not plowing,” Bodhi said. He was starting to really resent this goddamn delivery. But he’d checked: it really was papers, this time. At least he wasn’t risking his life for drugs.

“Well, they can’t really keep up,” Pam said. “It’s really coming down out there. But I mean, that’s what winter’s like, here.”

“Yeah,” Bodhi said, “I see that. I’m gonna keep going, I’ll check in later.”

“Okey-doke,” Pam said. “Keep us posted. I’ll pray for you. Er, I mean, if that’s not offensive.”

“Thanks,” Bodhi said. “No, it really isn’t, I do mean thanks.”

He had to get himself together in his head and in his heart, what he was really going to do. He couldn’t just keep pretending he didn’t know the delivery service was wrapped up in illegal stuff. He knew now that Jim was in on it, to an extent, and didn’t want to be; Jim had gotten a gun pulled on him in the course of some high-stakes delivery of either drugs or money, and he’d known it. The gun had made him lose his nerve a little, and Bodhi had a suspicion that some of the stuff they’d’ve had Jim knowingly do, they were starting to shunt off onto Rob, who didn’t know or was an _incredibly good_ actor, or Bodhi himself, who also ostensibly didn’t know.

He also knew that his own protestations were going to do no good, and if it came to it, they’d set him up as a fall guy. He had no friends in this town, no family, and his brown face already made him a likely target for suspicion. They were using him and didn’t care what he felt about it. His only defense was if they thought him too dim to catch on.

Bodhi had begun to judiciously and quietly listen more. He’d ignored it before, had found ways to avoid overhearing things, but now he was doing the opposite. And he knew names, now. He knew the names of the people Krennic took calls from most frequently, knew who did the most business with the company, knew who didn’t get invoiced normally but paid in non-traditional ways.

He was starting to piece together which outfit Jeron was probably involved with. There were a number of Hispanic names on the accounts, but there was specifically a Gomez who spoke to Krennic with great frequency, and with whom Pam had to do a lot of coordinating of pickup and dropoff times.

There was some factor he didn’t yet understand, though. Some consistent references to The Order, and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what the heck The Order would be. There was a lot of knowing looks and understanding nodding going on, and he couldn’t begin to understand what it was about. He’d assumed Gomez was involved in one of the cartels, about which there was spotty information widely available, but none of them quite lined up. Instead, there was this Order, and what it was, he couldn’t begin to guess.

Bodhi made his delivery and shot a text to Jeron after radioing in to Pam. _On my way to the gas station_ , he wrote. _Status?_

 _Had some trouble_ , Jeron wrote back.

That was enigmatic. “Gonna make that refueling stop,” he told Pam.

“You’re the last driver I still have out on the road,” she said. “Everyone else has scratched. Get that gas and get back here.”

“Don’t wait for me,” Bodhi said. “You’ve still got to get yourself home.”

“So do you,” she said.

“If it’s that bad,” Bodhi said, “I can just drive the van directly to my house and leave it there.”

“You live out that way, don’t you,” Pam mused.

“Yeah,” Bodhi said. “I know it’s not policy to take the vans home but if I can’t get back there--”

“Oh, you can deviate from policy for this,” Pam said. “It’s real bad out there.”

“I know,” Bodhi said, “I’m out there.” His phone buzzed.

 _Very bad trouble,_ Jeron wrote. _Ran out of gas at least three miles short of target._

Well, shit. _Current location?_

“You know what,” Pam said, “why don’t you do that, Bodhi? Just get yourself off the road, get gas whenever. I just called and confirmed, that service station is open but they said they’d dismissed most of the staff and might shut down. The county hasn’t issued a travel ban yet but there’s an advisory.  The van has better ground clearance and front-wheel drive, you’re better off in it.”

“I’ll fuel the van up before I get back,” Bodhi said, “but that might not be until tomorrow.”

Jeron texted back with an intersection, and a hopeful, _Why, are you still on the road?_

 _I’m still on the road_ , Bodhi wrote.

 _Well_ , Jeron wrote, _my options are you, a three-mile walk, or finding out just how good this parka is in this truck overnight._

 _Me_ , Bodhi wrote back. This wasn’t Siberia, but it didn’t matter how good a parka Jeron had. Unless he had a really killer survival kit in that rustbucket of a truck, he wouldn’t make it overnight. It wasn’t as brutally cold out as it could be, but it also wasn’t any kind of weather to fuck with. _ETA 45 min._ In fair weather, it was a seven-minute drive.

 

It took him an hour and a half. The radio was silent, the road was deserted, the whiteout persisted, and Bodhi navigated through the ever-deeper snow by watching out the side windows for telephone poles, trees, street signs, mailboxes-- anything looming up out of the near-zero visibility. There was probably a travel ban by now, but there was only so much he could do. The van was low on fuel, but he’d make it as far as his apartment, and the gas station was beyond that; he could get there in the morning.

It wasn’t even snowing that hard, it was just the wind, and it was bitter cold. The climate here was bad, but not tundra-bad, usually. Snowstorms were vicious but brief. But it was bad enough, and this was about as terrible as it got. If Jeron’s truck wasn’t well-insulated, he was going to be pretty uncomfortable by now. If he weren’t so busy driving, Bodhi would have been Googling to find out how long it would take someone to die of exposure in a stranded vehicle.

Longer than an hour and a half, surely.

A street sign loomed up and Bodhi frowned. This was the intersection Jeron had told him. He put his flashers on and let the van roll to a stop, and pulled out his phone. _Where are u_ , he sent.

No response, and he got out and scraped the windshield while he waited. It was damned unpleasant, his coat wasn’t heavy enough for this wind, and the wind forced the snow down his collar, but the windshield needed the attention.

Still no response on his phone, and Bodhi shoved it back into his pocket in annoyance. This was the intersection Jeron had said. He went and looked down the side road, which not only wasn’t plowed but also didn’t have any helpful ruts. He wasn’t going down there in the van, he’d get stuck.

But then he saw it: a truck, pulled off to the side of the road about a hundred yards down the side road, heavily covered with snow. He pulled out his phone and called Jeron’s with it; he wasn’t sure it would work for an incoming call, but surely it was worth a shot.

After a few rings, the cellphone announced that the wireless customer had not configured a voicemail box, and hung up. Bodhi swore, and went back and kicked the snow off the mud flaps of the van before getting back in.

If he went off the road in this goddamned van they were just both going to die here, and that was going to suck, but it was too dangerous to leave the van right in the middle of the main road, and that truck was too far to walk to in this snow with the shitty boots Bodhi had.

He got in and drove, determined but ginger, down the side road to the truck, and made it all right, though he wasn’t sure how he was going to turn around. If after all this, Jeron had found some other way out, he was going to be really really annoyed.

He got out of the van, and went over to the truck’s driver-side door. He couldn’t see in, because the truck was set pretty high, so he rapped on the window. No response.

He stood on the running board to look in, and almost fell off. There was Jeron’s parka, at least; it was impossible to see who was wearing it through the frost on the window, but someone was certainly sitting in the driver’s seat. Bodhi stepped off the running board and opened the door, which was unlocked.

“Jeron,” he said.

Jeron was in the driver’s seat with his knees pulled up to his chest, asleep, but Bodhi knew this wasn’t the kind of weather you slept in. He reached in and grabbed Jeron’s shoulder.

Jeron made a noise, and Bodhi shook him a little. “Wake up,” he said. “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to sleep in a blizzard!”

Jeron blinked at him, peering out through the frost-tipped fur on the hood of his parka. “What,” he said indistinctly. He was shivering and confused, and Bodhi didn’t know a ton about survival situations or whatever but he knew those were bad things.

“Get up,” Bodhi said, “come on, get in the van.”

Jeron looked around, disoriented. “Was I asleep? I wasn’t asleep.” His accent was nearly impenetrable, and Bodhi realized it was because he was shivering so much he couldn’t open his jaw properly.

“Come on,” he said, “come on.”

Jeron unfolded his limbs awkwardly, and Bodhi dragged him out of the truck. He was mostly dead-weight, stumbling and shaking, and Bodhi hauled him bodily to the van’s passenger-side door and threw him in, grateful that Jeron wasn’t any bigger. He was heavy and hard to move, but Bodhi could just about do it.

He went around and got in the driver’s side, and Jeron said, “I wasn’t asleep!”

“It’s okay,” Bodhi said. He switched the vent system from the defrosters to the cabin heaters, for a moment. He’d have to get out and scrape again, but first he had to make sure Jeron was all there. “Think for a moment. Do you need anything out of that truck? We’re leaving it here and going somewhere safe.”

“Uh,” Jeron said, “I don’t-- I don’t think so?”

“Good,” Bodhi said. He got out, scraped that goddamn chunk of ice off the dead spot in the windshield again, got back in. Jeron had pulled his feet up into the seat again and was curled into a ball, shivering. “Sit tight, we’re getting off the road.”

“Okay,” Jeron said, muffled. Turning the van around took all of Bodhi’s concentration, with no ruts to guide him, and he made his way back to the main road. A truck had been by since he’d turned off, thank heavens; there were ruts now, and he could follow them. It was only midafternoon, but the snow was so thick it was dark anyway.

“How-- what happened?” Jeron asked after a little while.

“You ran out of gas and I came to get you,” Bodhi said. “I’m sorry, I need to focus, when we get home I’ll warm you up and we’ll sort out what’s going on.”

“Okay,” Jeron said, and went quiet. Bodhi set his teeth and forced the van through the ever-deeper snow, and could have cried with relief when he saw the turn-off to the apartment complex.

The lines were invisible in the parking lot, so he just ditched the van crookedly in front of his building, and went around to the passenger’s side to get Jeron out.

Jeron was shivering hard enough to need help walking. Bodhi pulled Jeron’s arm over his shoulders and half-carried him into the building and up the stairs, managing to get his keys out without dropping him. “Come on,” he said, “come on.”

“I’m trying,” Jeron said, with a frustrated laugh.

Bodhi shut the door, went over to the thermostat and turned the heat up, put his keys down, got his boots off before he dripped all over the floor, and came back and unzipped Jeron’s parka when he realized Jeron was shivering too hard to do it.

“I don’t know anything about hypothermia,” Bodhi said, “so I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, but I’m British enough that I’m going to put the kettle on before I do literally anything else.” He went and did so, and when he came back, Jeron had managed to struggle out of his boots, gloves, and parka, and was standing in the entryway shivering.

“I don’t have hypothermia,” Jeron said. “I’m fine. I just fell asleep because I’m exhausted.”

“Stop shivering then,” Bodhi said. He pulled out his phone and opened the browser and searched on hypothermia symptoms, right then and there as he pulled Jeron into the room and sat him on the couch next to the pile of blankets he customarily wrapped himself in when he sat there. “That’s what it says here. If you can stop shivering, then you’re only very mildly hypothermic and it’s all right, but if you’re shivering uncontrollably--”

“I’m fine,” Jeron said, exasperated, but wrapped a blanket around himself. He didn’t stop shivering.

Bodhi read down the checklist. “Can you feel your feet?”

“I’m fine,” Jeron repeated.

“Ah,” Bodhi said, “denial and disorientation, that’s right on there.”

“Bodhi,” Jeron said, pulling the blanket up over his head, “I have goddamn survival training, I am slightly cold, I am not dying, I am fine.”

“Oh,” Bodhi said, scrolling, “this suggests getting into a sleeping bag with another person and maximizing skin-to-skin contact to rewarm the affected individual.”

Jeron didn’t answer for a moment, but then peeked out of the blanket. “Oh,” he said, perking up a little.

Bodhi put his hand on his hip and regarded Jeron. “I mean, I’m just saying.”

“Is the sleeping bag strictly necessary?” Jeron asked. “Or, say, could a blanket suffice?” He held out a corner.

The kettle boiled. “Tea first,” Bodhi said. When he came out a moment later, Jeron was still a ball of blankets on the couch, but he shifted over and peered hopefully up at Bodhi, making room for him to sit down.

“You saved me,” Jeron said. “My hero.”

“Who sent you out with no gas in that weather?” Bodhi asked crossly.

Jeron rolled his eyes and sighed. “The gas gauge doesn’t work, you have to use the trip odometer, and I underestimated how bad the mileage would be in this weather,” he said. “I’m the only one who the boss ever gives the cash to, to fill it up, so I knew I had to, but I figured I had, you know, like thirty or forty more miles on that tank. Plus I wound up off the road, and I had to rock it out of the ditch, and who even knows how much fuel that took up. I’d’ve made it if I hadn’t gone off the road.”

“I can’t even imagine what task you had that was so important you had to drive in that,” Bodhi said.

“It’s my job,” Jeron said, a little prickly, but he was looking down. He picked up the cup of tea, and Bodhi could see that his hands were dead white and clumsy with the cold.

“I can hold the cup for you,” Bodhi said, “but it’s probably still too hot to drink.”

“I’m fine,” Jeron said, still not making eye contact.

Bodhi stood up. “Come on,” he said, “hot shower, I have clean towels. Hot shower, then tea, then blankets. I don’t care if you’re fine, you look miserable.”

Jeron looked up at him then. “I mean,” he said, “I’m not gonna say no to an offer like that.”

Bodhi showed him how the controls worked, and turned the water on so it could get hot. Then, it turned out that Jeron’s fingers were too cold to unfasten his trousers, so Bodhi unfastened them for him.

Jeron caught Bodhi gently by the arm and looked into his face. “Hey,” he said.

Bodhi looked up. They were both in their socks, and Jeron was only maybe two inches taller than he was. One corner of Jeron’s mouth pulled sideways, and then he leaned forward.

“Oh,” Bodhi said; he’d sort of compartmentalized today into rescuing-Jeron-from-blizzard, the context so different from the last time he’d seen the man that he’d sort of forgotten about the making-out-with-Jeron part that he’d previously been thinking about so much. He tipped his head up, and Jeron kissed him, lips cold and chapped. Even his tongue was cold. _Not hypothermic, my arse,_ Bodhi thought.

“Okay,” Jeron said after a moment, “maybe I was a little disoriented, because I think I’m only just reacting now. Holy shit.”

“Get in there,” Bodhi said, and pulled on Jeron’s sweatshirt. It was the same grubby hoodie from the other day; Jeron shed it, and then pulled his shirt off over his head too, and his undershirt, and Bodhi looked at his bare chest and thought about how soft his skin had been, when Bodhi had touched him in the car. “Shower first,” he said, making himself step back. “Warm up, and then we can make out.”

And, oh. There was no reason they’d have to stop. The realization made Bodhi’s heart give a weird thumping lurch, of nervousness or excitement he wasn’t sure.

Jeron laughed, and got himself out of his trousers by stepping on the cuffs to pull them down, doing the same to his socks. “You could come in with me,” he said.

“I could,” Bodhi said, “but I’d rather not try any funny stuff until I’m confident you can feel your feet.”

Unselfconscious, Jeron wriggled out of his underpants, and got into the shower before Bodhi could really process what he was seeing (pale skin, dark hair). “Do I have to prove the status of my feet?” Jeron asked.

Bodhi laughed. “I’m going to go get you some pajamas,” he said. “I’ll check on your feet when I get back.”

He dug out the nicest of his clean towels, a spare pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, a pair of clean socks without holes, found a spare cardigan, and hesitated outside the bathroom door. It felt strange to go in, like he’d be invading, but. Jeron had invited him.

He went in. Jeron poked his head around the shower curtain, already looking much livelier and pinker. “So you just rescued me from a blizzard and brought me back here to ravish me,” he said. “That’s like, the best pick-up anybody’s ever tried on me.”

“I honestly hadn’t thought it through,” Bodhi said, “but if you’re into that, I could give it a shot.” He set the bundle of clothes down on the sink. “How are your feet?”

Jeron gave him a calculating look, then shut off the water. Bodhi held out the towel and he took it. “They’re kind of burning,” he said. “But I know they’ll be fine.” He picked up one foot, demonstrated that he could wiggle the toes. He’d stopped shivering, at least intermittently.

“Fingers?” Bodhi asked.

“They’re all right too,” Jeron said, and set to toweling himself off, brisk and businesslike. His hair was stuck down to his head, and it made his features look sharper, made him look older and even more starkly skinny.

“I just had a profound moment of channeling my mother,” Bodhi said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I saw your ribs and it was like my entire being funneled into this profound desire to make you ruti.”

“What’s ruti?” Jeron asked warily, head emerging from the towel.

“Bread,” Bodhi said, gesturing vaguely. “Like-- flat bread. I don’t know how to make it, so you’re safe.”

Jeron wrapped the towel around his waist and stepped out onto the bathmat. With his toweled hair fluffy, he looked younger again, and sweet. “Oh,” he said.

“I went grocery shopping yesterday,” Bodhi said, picking up on what might have been a hint of disappointment in that. “So there’s plenty of other stuff to eat. Tea first, though, you need to drink your tea, I’m sure it’s cool enough. You take sugar in it, right?”

“I don’t usually drink tea,” Jeron said. “So I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

The least awkward thing to do seemed to be to go back and fetch the tea mugs from the living room to put sugar in them, so Bodhi did that, and went back into the kitchen and grabbed a box of crackers. Jeron came out of the bathroom, shivering again, and Bodhi shooed him back into the living room and set him up with food and tea.

“Get in here with me at least,” Jeron said, and Bodhi considered the way he was bustling around, and decided he could sit for a moment. Jeron engulfed him in the blanket burrito, and Bodhi wound up with Jeron more or less in his lap. He extricated an arm to retrieve his tea.

“You really feel strongly about your tea,” Jeron observed.

Bodhi wriggled himself into a more comfortable position, and took a drink. Perfect temperature. “I do,” he said. “Listen, mate, I’m from London, it’s not just a thing British people do in cartoons.”

Jeron shivered, and took a drink from his mug. He was mostly using it as a hot water bottle. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. He looked around the room. “This is a pretty nice place.”

“Not really,” Bodhi said, “but it’s watertight and reasonably secure, so I don’t complain.”

“At least we know in this weather nobody could’ve followed me here,” Jeron said. “But I bet they think I died.”

“Oh,” Bodhi said, “it’s a golden opportunity to fake your own death.” He could still feel cold radiating out of Jeron. “You really could have died, you know.”

“I do know,” Jeron said. “I can’t believe I fell asleep. I know better. But I’ve been up and going since 4:30 this morning, and I haven’t really eaten, and all the stuff they told me in survival training just fell right out of my head.”

“You haven’t eaten,” Bodhi said, appalled. He retrieved the box of crackers. “Jesus. That’s--”

“I’m all right,” Jeron laughed, but he took a cracker.

“No wonder my mother’s spirit is trying to possess me,” Bodhi said. “My God, I have to go and roast you a whole chicken.”

Jeron laughed again, a real and bright laugh. “You don’t have a chicken,” he said.

“I do, though,” Bodhi said, and put his teacup down. “It’s in the fridge, I was going to do it on the weekend. When I can get the energy together I roast a chicken and then cut it up and eat the rest of it all week.”

“You’re kidding,” Jeron said.

“I’m not,” Bodhi said, and wriggled out from under him. “Let me go turn the oven on, I’m not even making this up.”

Jeron trailed after him into the kitchen, wrapped in the blanket. “No fucking shit,” he said, disbelieving, as Bodhi retrieved the shrinkwrapped bird from the fridge. “I figured you were vegetarian.”

“Vegetarian,” Bodhi said, surprised, setting the chicken in the sink and digging through a drawer for his all-purpose scissors.

“I mean,” Jeron said. He fidgeted awkwardly. “I assumed you were. Aren’t. Uh. Aren’t Buddhists vegetarians?”

Bodhi stared at him as realization dawned across his consciousness. “You did research,” he said.

Jeron was sort of pink all over already from the defrosting, but he was clearly pinker. “I mean,” he said. “Your name.”

“My name,” Bodhi said. “That’s very astute of you.”

“I wanted to know,” Jeron said, squirming a little.

Bodhi laughed, and leaned over and kissed his cheek. “That’s very sweet of you. I’m not Buddhist, though, I’m Hindu, but you got bonus points for thinking of it. As it happens, I was raised eating not a lot of meat but I don’t know how to cook like that.”

“I don’t know anything about Hindus,” Jeron said, distressed. “I didn’t think to look that up!”

“I don’t mind,” Bodhi said. “I know a lot about Buddhists, though, including that a lot of them aren’t vegetarians, so if you want to find out how good your research was, we can talk about it later.” He cut the plastic bag around the chicken and set it back down in the sink while he washed the scissors off.

Jeron laughed, distressed. “No, now I have to go steal wifi somewhere again and start all over.”

“It’s fine,” Bodhi said. “You already win for trying.”

“It’s not about trying,” Jeron said. “Wait, but you’re seriously cooking a chicken right now.”

“I’m not a great cook,” Bodhi said. “My mother never taught me anything. But I figured out how to do this on my own. You can learn a lot from that search box on the Internet, and some nice lady gave me a pamphlet, and also I tested a things out for myself, because the Internet doesn’t tell the whole truth all the time.” He got his roasting pan, a Salvation Army find, out of the cabinet, rinsed and dried the bird, and dumped it in, coating it liberally in salt and pepper and dotting it with butter. Jeron was standing sort of dumbstruck in the doorway.

“Are you for real?” he asked finally.

“You’re okay with food that has flavors on it, right?” Bodhi asked, contemplating the tin he kept his spice jars in.

“I’ve been living on fucking rice and beans,” Jeron said, “and like, garbage mac and cheese, and come on, look at me, do I look like I wouldn’t want food to taste like anything?”

“Just checking,” Bodhi said. He doctored the chicken the way he liked it, and put it in the oven and turned it on. He set a timer on his phone, and turned around, and Jeron was standing right there and crowded him against the counter and kissed him.

“Please,” Jeron said, “please, I need to-- I have to touch you, please.”

“Mm,” Bodhi said, not at all disagreeing, and Jeron had his freezing-cold hands up inside Bodhi’s shirt, and _wow_ okay suddenly all Bodhi’s confusion and distraction and flusteredness and nervousness was gone, and he was just lust and desire and he had to touch Jeron all over.

“Fuck,” Jeron said, “I’m warm now.”

“Your hands are goddamn freezing,” Bodhi said. He slipped his phone into his sweatshirt pocket and jerked his head toward the door. “C’mon, we got like an hour til I gotta turn this bird. Let’s get under some blankets.”

“Oh,” Jeron said, delightedly, following Bodhi into the bedroom. “Skin contact, right?”

Bodhi laughed. “It’s the only way to be sure you’re not frozen.”

It was so strange to be with someone here; Bodhi hadn’t dated anyone in his new life, since he’d left school and left his family and left behind anyone he knew. Weirder still was to be with a man. He’d never brought a man back to his place, anywhere he’d lived.

Jeron’s hands were cold and rough-textured, but gentle and almost reverent against Bodhi’s body, carefully pulling his clothing away, smoothing over his skin. Nobody had ever handled him so delicately, like he was something to treasure.

He was a great deal less smooth at getting Jeron undressed. In contrast to his work-rough hands, Jeron’s skin was smooth and soft, and he wasn’t particularly hairy. He was almost painfully lean, though, so spare and sharp, and he was still cold. Bodhi wound up just draped over him, chest to chest, holding both of his hands between their bellies, kissing the sharp line of his collarbone.

“You’re so pretty,” Jeron said wonderingly, freeing a hand to reach up and touch Bodhi’s face. “You’re just so-- beautiful.” He ran his forefinger down the straight bridge of Bodhi’s nose, then traced his cheekbone with his thumb.

Bodhi laughed, and wriggled against him. Jeron was naked, under the blankets, but Bodhi still had underwear on. “I mean it, though,” Jeron said. “You look like-- the way your face is, you just look like royalty or something.”

Bodhi really laughed at that. “I’m a truck driver,” he said. “Don’t be silly, you can’t tell by looking if someone’s royalty or not.”

Jeron freed his other arm, and flipped Bodhi to lie on top of him with an almost unnerving ease. Jeron was strong, but he was also well-trained, and had apparent survival training, a police dog, upper-class table manners, and excellent teeth. And an assumed name. Bodhi lay flat under him, gasping a little, and decided he was going to think about all of that a little bit later. “You’re like a prince from a fairy tale, though,” Jeron said, distractedly losing his own train of thought.

Right now, Jeron’s dick was hard against his hip, and he was grinding down with definite intent, and Bodhi was so turned-on he was wondering if he’d ever really understood what being turned-on was before this moment. Jeron kissed him, deep and intense, and hooked his thumb in the waistband of Bodhi’s underwear, tugging it down.

In a moment Bodhi was naked too, and he shivered, half-dazed with arousal. “Oh-- _yeah_ ,” he said, as Jeron closed a hand around his dick and tugged experimentally at it.

“Yeah,” Jeron agreed, and kissed him. “Oh wow, I’m so out of practice.”

“Seems to me you know what you’re doing,” Bodhi pointed out, and Jeron laughed, then made a low, fervent noise as Bodhi set to work on him. He tipped his forehead down against Bodhi’s shoulder and retaliated in kind, moving his hand with more purpose.

“I don’t have any-- I’m not exactly prepared for this kind of thing,” Bodhi said breathlessly.

Jeron kissed him. “Do we need to do anything different?” he asked. “This is fine for me. I just want to touch you.”

“Oh,” Bodhi said, “well, then, okay.” Jeron nipped at the edge of his jaw, and bit his neck, not hard but hard enough, and he made a kind of embarrassing noise and writhed in his grip.

“Fuck,” Jeron groaned fervently, “fuck, that’s hot, you’re _hot_ ,” and from how he was hitching his hips he was pretty close, so it was okay that Bodhi was really close too. He hadn’t-- it had been so long since anyone had touched him, his body wasn’t sure what to do, couldn’t remember ever feeling like this.

“Jeron,” he said, intense, breathing hard.

“Cassian,” Jeron said, and it jolted Bodhi for a moment, but then he followed it up with, “my real name-- is Cassian--”

“Cassian,” Bodhi said, and Jeron-- or, he supposed, Cassian-- groaned, heart-felt and desperate. “Come on, then,” Bodhi said, his heart softening as he realized what that meant.

“Bodhi,” Cassian gasped. “Bodhi--”

“Yeah,” Bodhi said, and Cassian made a high, pleading, broken sort of noise, and came, shivering and gasping.

“Bodhi,” Cassian pleaded, shivering and breathless.

“That’s my real name,” Bodhi said. “I promise. It’s really my name.”

Cassian managed a broken-off kind of laugh, and re-focused his efforts on Bodhi’s cock, which was pretty undeterred by all the unexpected name drama. He brought his hand up and licked it. “Fuck,” he hissed, “ah, c’mon.”

Out of practice or not, Cassian was pretty good at dick. Bodhi sucked in his breath as Cassian’s hand moved faster. He’d gone all tingly again, and his limbs were far away, and Cassian’s hand was warm and wet and just right, a lot more intense than Bodhi’s own ever was. It hit him from the center out, pulling him out of himself, and he shuddered, breath sighing out of him as the warm wave of pleasure swept through him.

Cassian hummed blissfully and sucked on his neck, and Bodhi subsided into the bed, pinned down and heavy, drifting in pleasant drowsiness. “There you go,” Cassian murmured. “Aren’t you beautiful.”

“Hnngh,” Bodhi said, and wiped his hand on the sheets, then brought both hands up to take Cassian by the jaw and kiss him softly, gently.

Cassian rolled off him and lay next to him in the bed, breath slowing down to normal speed. “Wow,” he said, after a few minutes.

It was a long time since Bodhi had studied any kind of biology, but he remembered something about the endorphins and things released by orgasm. Whatever they were, they were making his whole self feel really good. He was warm and slightly buzzing and kind of felt like he was melting into the surface of the mattress. He yawned, and said, “I assume you still want me to call you Jeron, though.”

Cassian rolled onto his side, and slung an arm over Bodhi, pulling him close. “I shouldn’t have told you,” he said. “You shouldn’t get mixed up in this.”

“Do you have to go by a lot of assumed names?” Bodhi asked, tracing Cassian’s collarbone with his fingers.

“Not usually,” Cassian said. “Just for this job.” He tilted his head forward, pressed his forehead against Bodhi’s. It was pleasant and warm and he smelled of Bodhi’s shampoo. “I guess it bothers me more than I thought it would. It wasn’t bothering me, before you.”

“Don’t let me screw it up for you,” Bodhi said. “I’m nobody.”

Cassian pulled back a little to look at Bodhi’s face. “That, you aren’t,” he said, frowning, then leaned in and kissed Bodhi, sweet and tender. It was-- really nice, and Bodhi was starting to get used to it, which was a problem. “You’re the only really decent person I’ve met since I got here.”

“Hm,” Bodhi said, because he didn’t know what to say to that.

“Also you saved my life,” Cassian said. He was sleepy, heavy-lidded, and Bodhi pushed the hair gently out of his eyes and leaned in to kiss his eyelids.

“Well,” Bodhi said, “I’m glad I did. Hey, stay here, I’m gonna go finish making dinner. I’ll let you know when it’s done.”

“Do you need any help?” Cassian asked drowsily.

“No,” Bodhi said, “I’m not really doing anything I wasn’t going to anyway.” He kissed Cassian’s forehead and got out of the bed. He was pretty sure Cassian was asleep before he even left the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've mentioned this in the comments but am promoting it up to a story note: there were some very interesting discussions over on Tumblr about the content of this story, especially pertaining to the idea of writing about the experience of racism by a character of color when the author is *not* a person of color, among other things. Initial post [here](http://bomberqueen17.tumblr.com/post/157211226209/1-this-is-going-to-be-long-please-copypaste), with a really excellent series of asks to follow-up [here](http://bomberqueen17.tumblr.com/post/157297334894/this-hellsite-wont-let-me-post-the-last-bit-of-my) and another short bit [here](http://bomberqueen17.tumblr.com/post/157394704509/i-love-your-thoughtful-and-measured-response-to).  
> I think it's a fascinating discussion and it *is* important to discuss, whichever side of the debate you wind up agreeing with. The tl;dr takeaway is that there's no One Right Answer and it's important to give it serious thought.
> 
> Anyway, also, feel free to come say hi on Tumblr even if you don't have anything to add to the discussion! It's a long cold lonely winter. I don't always answer messages or asks in a timely fashion but I do, I really do, appreciate and enjoy them.


	4. Thirty Cents Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More background, and Cassian and Bodhi take a road trip.

 

Cassian came shuffling out bleary-eyed, hair sticking up wildly, about 45 minutes later as Bodhi was cutting up the chicken. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” he said. He went to his parka and fished around until he produced a phone, and made a disgusted face at it.

“There’s a charger,” Bodhi said, pointing to the counter. 

“Does it take the same kind?” Cassian wondered, but saw, as Bodhi already had, that it did, and plugged it in. 

“They really didn’t send anyone else out after you?” Bodhi asked.

“We don’t-- that’s not really how it goes,” Cassian said, distracted as his phone lit up. “I go off on my own a lot. I don’t-- I should check in with someone, but.” He stopped talking and poked at the screen, frowning. It was one of the low-end phones, nothing fancy, but at least it took the standard charger. 

“You need a good story,” Bodhi said. He had portioned out the meat for tonight’s dinner, and stuck the other parts he planned on using for subsequent meals into containers and the carcass into a pot with water and herbs to make stock, but he glanced over at Cassian’s narrow frame, the strip of skin where Bodhi’s sweatpants were too loose on him and riding down-- and Bodhi was pretty thin himself, it wasn’t like those were big trousers-- and added more to the serving plate. 

“Mm,” Cassian said, and glanced over at him, grinning. “The key is to stick close to the truth. Some nice white lady saw me stranded and saved me.”

“Cooked you dinner,” Bodhi said. Cassian set the phone down and came over to him, coming up behind him and sliding a hand around his waist, under his shirt, across his belly. It was weird, and Bodhi couldn’t help but pull his shoulders up ticklishly, but he leaned into the contact so Cassian wouldn’t pull away. 

Cassian nuzzled at the side of Bodhi’s neck, into his hair. “Saved my life,” he said, then, softer, husky, “took me to bed.”

It was ticklish but pleasant, and Bodhi let himself be distracted by it, let his heart stutter off-beat a little bit, didn’t fight it or try to pull away. “You’ll need to think of a different name for this miracle lady,” he said. 

“I’m not telling anyone a name,” Cassian said. “Keep it simple, that’s how you pull that sort of thing off.” He kissed Bodhi just under his ear, at the hinge of his jaw, a soft slow kiss, and stepped away, going back to his phone. “And then in the morning she threw me out and told me not to tell anyone, so I won’t go into any more detail than that.” He smiled a little sadly, and scrolled down a list of something. “I’m going to call,” he said, apologetically. “They don’t know about this phone yet, but I’ll have to burn the number tomorrow. I’ll send you a new one.”

Bodhi nodded absently, checking the pot of rice on the stove. It was done, so he stirred it and turned the heat off, putting the lid back on to hold the steam in. He’d managed vegetables, even if they were only frozen ones he’d just heated up. It was better than nothing. 

Cassian spoke into the phone in Spanish, and his voice was colder and harder than Bodhi was used to. Bodhi spoke basically no Spanish; he’d picked up a few phrases in college from the kids in the neighborhood his family had moved into, but nothing substantive. So he couldn’t follow along at all. 

Cassian was speaking in short phrases, clearly answering questions or something. Bodhi couldn’t hear the person on the other line at all. Now it was a short phrase being repeated, probably agreement or confirmation. He finished it off with a rapid-fire string of words, then ended the call. 

He looked at the phone. “I’m going to text one of my roommates to see if my dog ate anyone yet, and let him know I’ll be gone overnight,” he said. 

“Oh, right,” Bodhi said. “Your dog.”

“He gets anxious when I don’t come home,” Cassian said. 

“I’m going to eat dinner,” Bodhi said. “I assume you want some of this.”

Cassian looked over, then did a double-take. “Oh,” he said, “you really-- wow, I don’t know what I thought was going on over there but it wasn’t that.”

“I don’t have anything to drink in the house except water or orange juice,” Bodhi said. “You should probably have the orange juice, you don’t look like you get enough vitamins.”

Cassian laughed. “I, you’re probably right,” he said. 

Bodhi shoved the stack of mail into the corner of the kitchen table and wiped it off with the dishrag, then brought the food and plates over. Cassian was still fiddling with his phone, but set it down and looked up. “Oh,” he said, “let me help.”

“It’s all set,” Bodhi said, laughing. “Sit down.” 

Cassian ate like a starving man, after a slow start where he seemed to be remembering how food worked. “I love to cook,” he confessed, after some desultory conversation about how good the present food was, that Bodhi demurred was nothing compared to his mother’s cooking. “I’ve always known how to cook, and been good at it. But I can’t, where I am. If there’s any food in the house, everyone just eats it, and I can’t afford to keep buying more, and I don’t have time anyway.”

“My mother never taught me how to cook anything,” Bodhi said, “and I don’t know how to find any of the stuff I grew up eating, around here. So I can’t really make anything familiar. I feel really cut off, you know?”

“Oh,” Cassian said, “I hadn’t thought of that. I can usually find whatever ingredients I want, even here.”

Bodhi shook his head. “There’s a lot of stuff I just can’t get,” he said. “Some of it, I don’t even know what it’s called or where to look for it.”

Cassian sat back a little. “I didn’t think of that,” he said. He chewed thoughtfully. “I asked around, to see if I could take off a couple of days, said I wanted to go see a friend over in the capital. Boss hemmed and hawed a bunch, he really likes us to just always be available, but I do some specialty stuff for him and he sort of likes me, so he said probably, if I told him what days. He’s got an errand he’ll want me to run, but apart from that I’ll be free. So if you have a couple days, we could really go that far. I bet there are better grocery stores there, if nothing else.”

“Oh,” Bodhi said, “there are.” The state capital was a bit over an hour away, and had a pretty diverse collection of neighborhoods. Some friends of his parents lived there, and he’d visited them once, a while ago, before he’d completely cut off contact with his family. He wasn’t going to make that mistake again, but that didn’t preclude visiting the city. “I have off every other weekend.”

There was a calendar on the wall, and Cassian stood up to look at it. “Which weekend is your next free one?”

Bodhi reached up and tapped the correct dates. “I’ll ask for those days, then,” Cassian said. 

Bodhi bit his lip. “What do you want to do?” he asked. 

Cassian shrugged. “I don’t have a ton of extra money, but I can spring for one night in a motel,” he said. “I’ll probably have to stop by a friend’s house while I’m there, but other than that I don’t care.” He sighed. “It would just be nice not to be here.”

“But you’re thinking of spending a bunch of time in that motel room having sex,” Bodhi said.

Cassian laughed. “Kind of, yeah,” he said. “If you want.”

Bodhi bit his lip. “Kind of,” he said. Then something occurred to him. “What about your dog?”

Cassian rolled his lips into his mouth. “Do you not like dogs?” he asked, squinting uncertainly. 

“I don’t mind dogs,” Bodhi asked. “You could bring him if you wanted.”

“I know which motels allow dogs,” Cassian said, lighting up visibly in relief. “I’ve traveled with him before.” He let his lower lip slowly out from between his teeth, chewing at it a little. “Guess we should get a room with two beds, though. He really won’t sleep on the floor anymore, I’ve spoiled him.”

Bodhi was about to say something about wondering if it was creepy to have sex while the dog was in the room, but someone knocked at his door, and he startled. “Who,” he said, and then instantly thought of Chirrut. 

Cassian made a wide-eyed face. “Should I hide?” he said quietly, as Bodhi stood up.

Bodhi shrugged, shook his head. “It’s probably my neighbor,” he said. Still, Cassian stood up and went into the bathroom. Bodhi went and opened the door. 

It was Chirrut, as he’d thought. “You made it home,” Chirrut said. “I nearly drove Baze crazy asking him to keep checking for your car. But you didn’t come in your car?”

“Oh,” Bodhi said, “yeah, I really got stuck out in this snow. It was a nightmare today. I couldn’t get back to the depot to get my car, so I had to come home in the van. I don’t know that my car would’ve made it anyway, it’s got a lot less ground clearance.”

“Oh, I imagine it must have,” Chirrut said. “I came to see if you were all right, I know you’d said you were going to go shopping but I wasn’t sure you’d had a chance.”

Bodhi laughed. “I did have a chance, thank you. You’re right, though, there’s nothing worse than being caught short in a storm.”

“Especially with an unexpected visitor,” Chirrut said. Aha, that was the real reason. Well, Chirrut was the nosiest human ever to live, Bodhi wasn’t surprised. “Baze said you had a man with you, who wasn’t walking well on his own. He said I should mind my own business but I thought that sounded worrying.”

“Oh,” Bodhi said, “he’s all right. A friend of mine. His car ran out of gas, but I happened by and rescued him.” He turned. “I think he’s in the bathroom. I guess he took the chance of the interruption to escape my chattering.” 

“He’s all right now, though?” Chirrut asked. 

“Yeah,” Bodhi said, “no frostbite or anything, just took a while to warm him back up.”

“Tea,” Chirrut said.

“What kind of Brit would I be if that wasn’t the first thing I did,” Bodhi scoffed. Cassian came out of the bathroom, clearly having overheard enough to determine that hiding didn’t matter.

“Fair,” Chirrut said. Behind him, someone stomped their feet in the hall, and then a shape loomed up.

It was Baze, heavily wrapped against the cold, a scarf over the lower half of his face, and snow clinging to it and all over him. “Bad out there,” he said. “But you’re okay?”

“Have you been shoveling?” Bodhi asked, peering out at him. Chirrut was only lightly bundled, and not snowy at all; he’d clearly come through the hallway, but Baze had come from outside. “Surely there’s a service, though.” Had Baze really been shoveling the whole complex? Bodhi was sure the lease would have mentioned it.

“Just the steps,” Baze said. “I like to keep up.”

“Do you need help?” Bodhi asked.

“No,” Baze said, pulling the scarf down, “done for now. Just wanted to check on you.”

“I’m fine,” Bodhi said. 

“He rescued a stranded friend,” Chirrut filled Baze in, “but the friend is all right now.”

“Good,” Baze said. “It’s awful out there.” His gaze went over Bodhi’s shoulder, and he went oddly still. Bodhi glanced back, and saw that Cassian was frozen in the entryway to the kitchen, staring at him with the same odd stillness.

“Oh, do you know each other?” Bodhi said. “Jeron, this is Baze, and this is Chirrut, they’re my neighbors.”

“Nice to meet you,” Chirrut said, clearly having no idea which direction to turn; Cassian hadn’t made any sound. 

Baze sort of grunted, staring at Cassian, who was still staring back at him.

“Hi,” Cassian said, “pleasure’s mine.” He’d combed his wild hair down so it wasn’t so obviously bed-head, and had pulled up the sweatpants so they weren’t drooping, but he was clearly dressed in Bodhi’s clothes and there was no hiding it. 

“You need to be careful,” Baze said to him. 

“This weather really is something,” Chirrut filled in. 

Bodhi laughed politely. “It sure is,” he said, to cover his certainty that Baze hadn’t been talking about the weather. Did he know Cassian? Bodhi made the lightning decision not to call attention to having noticed the strange hesitation on both sides. “I’m really not looking forward to going out in it tomorrow.”

“The service is usually pretty good,” Baze said. “That clears the walks and the lot. They just don’t always do a great job on the steps, so I try to keep those clear.” For Chirrut’s benefit, Bodhi realized; the man was clearly in excellent shape and got around with very little trouble despite his disability, but slippery steps would be a problem for a man who couldn’t see the ice. The steps were probably always a bit of a problem, and that was why Chirrut was on them so often; Bodhi saw him climb them every day, and he’d bet it was to memorize them. 

No, they hadn’t lived here long.

“I have to go in early, though,” Bodhi said.

“Oh, they come by at like, four in the morning,” Chirrut said. 

“Good,” Bodhi said, and looked over at Cassian.

Cassian made a wry face. “We might have to get going that early,” he said. “I have to get fuel into that truck and get it back to where I was supposed to have been by tonight.”

“Get ‘em to fix that fuel gauge,” Bodhi said.

“A man can dream,” Cassian said. 

“Well,” Baze said, still staring at Cassian, “we should move along and see if Mrs. Hanrahan’s all right.” He gestured down the hall. 

“Is she the weird old racist lady?” Bodhi asked. “I tried to say hi to her and she hissed at me.”

“She hisses at me too,” Baze said, a touch wearily, “but I still want to make sure she’s all right in this storm.”

“She never hisses at me,” Chirrut said. “I’ll do the talking.”

“She thinks you’re crazy,” Baze said. 

“Maybe she’s just charmed by me,” Chirrut said, beaming brightly. He moved his staff, and felt with his other hand until he encountered Baze’s body. Baze kept a hand on his upper arm and stepped back, guiding Chirrut out without manhandling him. “Good night!” Chirrut said. 

“Good night,” Bodhi said, and Cassian echoed him faintly. 

Bodhi shut the door and Cassian started to open his mouth, but Bodhi held up a finger, shaking his head. He came back into the room, and came close to Cassian, and murmured, “Chirrut has really uncanny hearing.”

“Ah,” Cassian said, quietly. 

They stood for a moment, and Bodhi thought about asking Cassian how he knew Baze. He turned his head slightly, listening to hear if Baze and Chirrut came back. 

Cassian stepped just a little closer, and brought his hand up to touch the side of Bodhi’s neck. “Hey,” he said quietly. 

“Hey,” Bodhi said, looking at his mouth. They didn’t have to talk about this. 

 

They wound up making out on the couch for a long time, tangled together and wrapped in blankets. It was like nothing Bodhi had ever done before; they kissed and laughed and talked and kissed, bodies intertwined, heavy and tingling with arousal but lazy and comfortable, no urgency or haste. 

It was like sunshine directly to the brain, Bodhi thought, after being so alone and so cold for so long in such a dim place, it was like having all the nerve endings of his mind electrified with pleasure and companionship and happiness. And it was clear it felt the same way to Cassian; the other man was visibly lit up with it, sleepy and cozy and brilliantly alive, his breath and his heartbeat and the warmth of his body, and the soft thick hot pull of attraction, binding them and sparking along every place they touched. 

Eventually Bodhi managed to peel himself away long enough to suggest a move to the bed again, and Cassian laughed in delight and came along with him. They got naked again, and attraction sparked and flared up into full-blown arousal again, kicking the urgency of the encounter back up from where the embers had been banked. 

“Okay,” Cassian said, a little breathlessly, “now I wish I was prepared to do anything. I know I have all my shots and I’m up to date but it’s still probably not a good idea to get too into anything, huh?”

“Oh,” Bodhi said. He thought about it. “I haven’t seen a doctor in forever but I’ve also literally never had sex without a condom in my life.” 

“Heh,” Cassian said, “I’m tempted, I’m not gonna lie. Listen, no, I’ve got an idea.”

“I haven’t made a lot of decisions with my dick, in my life,” Bodhi said, “but I’m willing to make one now.”

“No, here, I read about this in a really filthy book,” Cassian said. “About posh British boarding school boys.”

“I went to a posh British boarding school,” Bodhi said, “and let me tell you, it was nowhere near as gay as one might hope.”

Cassian laughed in delight. “Aw,” he said, “can’t you just lie and say it was? There were a lot of blowjobs in this book, it was sort of creepy and sort of hot all at the same time.”

“Shit,” Bodhi said, “I haven’t sucked a cock in forever.” He had done so precisely once in his entire life, and had found it weird at the time, but it was something he thought about a lot more than he’d expected given how underwhelming the experience had been.

“It’s like riding a bicycle,” Cassian said. “You don’t forget.” He rolled over, snuggling up behind Bodhi, and went to work with his hand on Bodhi’s dick. His erection was pressed right up against the curve of Bodhi’s ass, and Bodhi gave some dedicated thought to that: he’d actually never done that sort of thing, his experience with other men was extremely limited and perfunctory at best. “But we can debate that another time. Right now, the thing I read about was if I put my dick between your thighs, it’s supposed to be good, like, for both of us, but I don’t know, the boy in the story might just have been really suggestible.”

“What,” Bodhi said, “like,” and they rearranged some things, and with judicious application of spit and some hand lotion Bodhi had near the bed (that honestly he did mostly use as hand lotion, things were pretty quiet around here), they figured out that regardless of the book’s literary merits or lack thereof, this was definitely a thing. 

“Oh,” Cassian said, pressing the side of his face against Bodhi’s shoulder blade. His beard was scratchy-soft against Bodhi’s skin and the sensation spiked a jolt of pleasure through him on top of what he was already feeling. 

“Oh, fuck,” Bodhi said, shuddering-- it was a slick, deep pressure against a part of his body he’d never realized was so sensitive, Cassian’s body hot against his, and he caught his breath and pressed his thighs together. Cassian’s hand came around and wrapped slick and tight around Bodhi’s cock, and Bodhi made a really fervent noise. “Holy shit,” he said. 

“Yeah,” Cassian said, “that’s--” 

It all dissolved into heavy breathing and groaning from that point onward, and it was all good, it was all amazing, but maybe the best thing was Cassian’s breath against the side of Bodhi’s neck, the plaintive little noises he made as he got closer and closer to orgasm, the way his body hitched against Bodhi’s. There were any number of things Bodhi would normally have been worrying or freaking out about, but at the moment he could only think of how good he felt, how good everything felt. 

Pleasure sparked, building pressure all along his limbs, collecting in his spine, and he shuddered with it, but his orgasm still caught him off guard, hitting him abruptly. He exclaimed, breath stuttering out of him, and Cassian bit his shoulder with an excited little moan, holding him as he shuddered. Only a moment later, Cassian joined him, jerking against him as his whole body tensed, then released, his breath catching raggedly. 

After a moment of drifting, blissful peace, Bodhi said, “Yeah o--okay th-that’s a, that’s worth doing.”

Cassian laughed softly against his shoulder, then nuzzled over against his neck, still breathing hard. “Yeah? Good, I’m glad my high-quality reading didn’t steer me wrong.”

“You don’t still have the book, do you,” Bodhi said, turning his head. “Was there anything else good in it?”

Cassian laughed again, more a movement of air than a sound, and kissed Bodhi’s shoulder, soft and wet. “It was years and years ago,” he said. “And I think it was in Spanish. I don’t remember.”

“Did you jerk off to it a lot?” Bodhi asked, which wasn’t really the kind of thing he often said, but he was almost drunk with how good he felt just now. 

“No,” Cassian said, “there was a really hot blowjob scene in the same book that I dog-eared the page of, that one I definitely did. But I always kind of wondered what this would be like.”

Bodhi laughed. “Funny what does it for you, I guess,” he said. He groaned as he rolled away a little bit. “You know, I guess it was time to wash these sheets anyway.” He was really sticky, though, all over his thighs. “I’m gonna, uh. Clean up.”

It wasn’t late, only around eight pm by now, but when he came back from the shower, Cassian was profoundly asleep. Bodhi puttered around the apartment, cleaning up from dinner, putting the leftovers away with the other chicken parts, and turned the heat off under the pot where he’d been simmering the carcass to make stock. He’d package that up the next day once it was cold. 

Once he had everything cleaned up in the kitchen, he turned the thermostat back down to where it belonged, and came into the bedroom.

Cassian had wedged himself against the wall as if the bed were tiny and he were trying not to fall out of it. Bodhi shed his sweatpants and climbed in next to him. He hadn’t really slept with anyone else in his bed in a very long time, and not often at that. Not since he was a little kid and his big sister had slept there sometimes, until she’d turned ten and their mother decided she was too old for that. 

Bodhi wasn’t going to think about his sister. He turned the bedside lamp off, and settled down. 

Cassian sighed in his sleep, and turned over, slinging an arm over Bodhi. Cassian mumbled something, but what he’d said wasn’t clear. 

Until he moved his hand and petted Bodhi, scritching his fingers against Bodhi’s ribs like-- oh, like he expected there to be fur. Bodhi laughed to himself, and settled down into the arms of a man who thought he was his dog, amused and comforted. 

 

_______

  
  


The knock at Bodhi’s door didn’t surprise him as much as it might have, but he still opened the door carefully. He expected Chirrut, but at Chirrut eye level there was only shoulder, and he looked up to see Baze. 

“Oh,” he said. “Hi.” And he looked, but Chirrut wasn’t there next to Baze, wasn’t behind him, wasn’t in the hallway at all. He stood back. “Come in?”

“I just need to speak with you for a moment,” Baze said. 

“All right,” Bodhi said, perplexed, and shut the door behind him as Baze came in. Baze was dressed, presumably, for work, in a sensible parka and sturdy-looking jeans and boots, snow mostly stomped off. He’d just come home from work and had detoured, so Chirrut wouldn’t know he was here, so he could speak to Bodhi alone. 

Ominous.

“Two things,” Baze said. “First, while I have you alone, I want to thank you for looking in on Chirrut. He’s very independent, of course, and he’s fine on his own, of course, but he’s-- he has seizures, occasionally, and I can’t help but worry about him when I leave him alone. It sets my mind at ease tremendously to know that if he-- if something happened, someone would-- he just gets disoriented, when that happens, and to know someone’s checking in, you know?” Baze fumbled to a halt. 

“Oh,” Bodhi said. “I-- of course.”

“Don’t tell him I told you that,” Baze said. “He won’t even talk to  _ me  _ about it, he won’t take kindly to anyone else bringing it up. Anyway, the other main thing is that it gives him something pleasant to talk about, how much he likes you and what he thinks of the gossip you bring him.” Baze didn’t quite smile, but his face softened. “He isn’t happy here. I’m only here on a temporary assignment for work, and I wanted him to stay with friends, but he wouldn’t. I’d hoped teaching at the dojo would be rewarding for him, but the master there doesn’t treat him as well as I’d like. I think you’re the only person who’s really kind to him.”

“How can they not treat him well?” Bodhi asked, astonished. 

Baze shook his head slowly. “It’s beyond me,” he said. “At any rate. You’re a good person, Bodhi Rook, and that’s why I’m telling you this second thing even though I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

Bodhi wasn’t so startled and pleased that he couldn’t make the connection. “You’re warning me about Jeron,” he said.

Baze breathed in, then out, slowly, regarding him warily, then nodded. “I am,” he said. 

“It looked to me like you recognized him,” Bodhi said. “I know he’s mixed up with the cartel, he’s told me that much.”

“It’s more than that,” Baze said. “They’re not just a cartel. But that’s the substance of it. Stay as clear as you can, Bodhi.”

Bodhi considered that, considered all the ways in which Cassian was not Jeron. He weighed that against Baze, and who Baze probably really was. “Do you work in law enforcement?” Bodhi asked. 

“I can’t tell you,” Baze said, but he sounded regretful.

Bodhi gazed up into Baze’s face thoughtfully. He had soft, kind eyes, creases around them that made him look world-weary, but there was nothing cruel in his face. “Is  _ he _ law enforcement?” he asked. 

Baze’s eyelids flickered, a tiny bit, and then he scowled. “I can’t talk about this with you,” he said. “But I’m telling you, there’s more going on than is obvious, and your best chance of getting out alive is to stay out of it.”

“I think I know what Krennic’s doing,” Bodhi said. “I can get evidence. At least I know what he’s using me to do.”

Baze looked alarmed, and suddenly leaned in and grabbed Bodhi by the upper arm. “Don’t do that,” he said. “Whatever you think you know, you don’t really, and it’s far more dangerous than you realize.”

“I know you don’t know me,” Bodhi said, carefully disentangling his arm from Baze’s grip, “but I’d like to point out that staying ignorant isn’t really going to protect me if I don’t know what the risk is.”

“The risk is that Krennic is involved in something far worse than any cartel,” Baze said, “and if he suspects you have any idea, no one will ever find out what happened to you.”

Bodhi stared at him for a long moment. “Understood,” he said finally. 

It wasn’t any kind of promise, but it seemed to satisfy Baze.

  
  
  


___________

  
  


It was late in the afternoon and the sun was setting already, and Bodhi filled the gas tank of his beat-up little hatchback half-asleep leaning on the salty side panel. Cassian had gone incommunicado for two days, then popped back into Bodhi’s phone under a new number with a wordless photo message, a selfie of himself and the dog, who looked, as usual, unimpressed. 

They’d exchanged only a few text messages. Bodhi always hesitated to text first. It wasn’t hard to piece together Baze’s warning with the constellation of identities and contradictions that was Cassian. Whoever he really was, he was being sloppy by making exceptions for Bodhi. 

He was either a cop, a spy, a Fed, or some kind of mole into the cartel’s operation. It was possible he was from a rival cartel, seeking to undermine this one. He might even be an assassin or something. Any of those possibilities meant he was in a great deal of danger if found out. 

He seemed to be aware of that. Bodhi seemed to be his one indulgence. It was a little unnerving, but at this point, Bodhi just didn’t care. He felt like he understood Cassian: neither of them had anything else for themselves, here. Bodhi’s trap was of his own doing, and had no obvious exit, but the walls were only inertia and lack of options, not whatever Cassian’s walls were made of. 

Maybe Cassian planned to throw Bodhi under the bus as he made his escape. Bodhi doubted it. 

It was a risk he was willing to take, anyway. He kind of had nothing better going on. 

Bodhi checked his phone again. Cassian was meeting him somewhere he could walk to, was the idea, so Bodhi could just pick him up as he drove by. As usual, he didn’t want to text first, for fear that someone would see English on Cassian’s phone screen and blow his cover. But as the pump clicked off, Bodhi resigned himself, and just sent a question mark. 

He put his phone in his pocket and finished the transaction, screwing the gas cap back on and writing down the mileage in his logbook like he always did, and as he was resetting the trip odometer, his phone buzzed. 

_ Got off-course, _ Cassian wrote,  _ going to be closer to Skyline _ , which was the name of a different cross-street. Bodhi pulled up his maps app, and investigated the area in some puzzlement.

_ What, are you hiking?? _ he wrote, because there were no other cross streets. The only way for Cassian to go there instead was if he was down in what, on the map, was just a blank screen, but from having been there Bodhi rather thought it was a brush-filled ravine.

In reply, he got a photo, which was Cassian’s face, blurry, with a backdrop of pine forest on a slope.  _ Did u think i was just going to walk on the road n get hit by cars? _

_ Uh _ , Bodhi wrote back,  _ kind of _ . There were some stunningly beautiful rural vistas around but Bodhi had never really been one for hiking, especially not in sub-freezing weather. Granted, it was only a couple of degrees below freezing this afternoon, had gotten up above freezing during the day, but the sun was setting and the temperature dropping, which meant all the snow that had melted in the sun would be reverting to ice now. Bodhi knew part of the point was that he wasn’t supposed to know where Cassian lived, but it wasn’t hard to narrow things down. There was a run-down neighborhood full of old houses in poor repair in a hollow near that ravine, and it wouldn’t take a great deal of observation to narrow it down further and figure out which house was full of Mexicans.

Not that Bodhi needed to narrow it down.  _ Be there in about 10 _ , he wrote back. 

The sun was still just barely jabbing a few anemic yellow razors through the bottoms of the trees on the horizon when Bodhi pulled over on the edge of the gravel turnoff. This was a good spot, because no houses overlooked it. Anyone driving past would see him stopped here, but no bored housewife looking out the window over the dishes would have him in her view. 

It made Bodhi uncomfortably aware that smuggling handoffs probably happened here. That was what he was learning about the beautiful isolated back roads of the rural outskirts of town. Just, drugs everywhere. There was a whole shadow economy and it was wound through everything. 

He shouldn’t get out of the car, in case there were any witnesses. But as he looked out at the weak pale yellow rays of the last of the sun picking out the needles of the pines, he suddenly felt like he had to. Like if he didn’t get out of this glass and metal box and look at the trees they wouldn’t be real, he wouldn’t be actually in this world. 

He unfastened his seatbelt and yanked the car door handle and staggered out of the car, finding his feet and taking a moment to stand and look at the forest. There was a faded metal sign that said “No Dumping” in all caps, the reflective enamel peeling away from half the surface, and a small scatter of garbage around the base of it, but otherwise the scene was fairly idyllic. 

Bodhi’s breathing steadied, and he leaned in and retrieved his mug of coffee, and shut the car door behind him, going around to lean against the hood and look into the ravine. The mug was warm-- inefficiently insulated, it was letting the warmth out of the coffee, but it felt nice on his fingers. (He’d bought it at a thrift shop, and it said  _ Girl Scouts: Keep It Green _ on it, and he got laughed at sometimes at work but the lid actually sealed, so he wasn’t giving the thing up.)

The scenery was beautiful. Up on the roads, the snow had all gone dingy and grey as traffic had splashed through it, but down in the woods it was still white and sparkling, golden-crystalline in the dying light. It was very tranquil, and quite lovely. 

Something rustled and crunched, down in the thicker part of the woods, and Bodhi watched with interest giving way to astonishment as three white-tailed deer broke cover and bounded away across the hillside, crashing through undergrowth and making an awful racket. He’d mostly seen them as roadkill, or as threatening idiots milling about at the side of the road; they were beautiful in full flight, and one had some majestic antlers.

They fled down the ravine and up the other side of it, and he watched them raptly; they didn’t gallop like horses, but bounded, in big leaps with odd suspended moments of quiet in the middles, their white tails flashing like flags. He pushed away from the car hood and walked closer to the edge of the ravine, staring after them and listening as the rustling and cracking of their violent passage faded into quiet. 

There were a lot of little noises in the woods. A flight of crows passed over, mostly silent apart from feathers, but with an occasional hoarse comment to one another. And something he couldn’t see was rustling around in the woods, somewhere in a side cut of the ravine, smaller than the deer. He wasn’t sure what wildlife was around here. Raccoons and porcupines and things, he’d looked it up at some point, but he wasn’t really sure. Maybe wolves, he should probably look that up, though it might be better not to know. 

He took a half-step back, then turned back toward his car, and stopped dead.

There was an enormous dog or wolf or something standing between him and his car, and even as he froze in terror he registered that #1 it was not a wolf, it was brown, #2 it was wearing a collar, #3 it was definitely Cassian’s dog, with upright ears and the same face from the photos, but he still stood there paralyzed in startlement for a moment staring at it. It was much larger than he’d thought, and darker-- black face and back, brown eyebrows and body-- and it was clearly smelling him, head extended, nostrils moving with its breath. 

“Uh,” Bodhi said. “Hi.” You didn’t talk to dogs, did you? But Cassian had gone on and on about how many words Kaytoo knew. “You must be Kaytoo.”

The dog’s ears stood up a little higher, and he tilted his head a little, and waved his tail a little bit. It was a long, bushy tail; the dog’s shoulders were broad and muscular, his body sloping downward a little from them. He had to weigh as much as a man. Bodhi wasn’t good at reading dogs, so he didn’t know if that was really a tail wag. 

“Shake hands,” Cassian said, appearing suddenly over the edge of the ravine. Kaytoo looked backward at him, tongue lolling out for a moment, then turned to look at Bodhi, sat down on his haunches, and extended a paw.

“Oh for real?” Bodhi said, regarding the proffered paw with some trepidation. 

Cassian laughed, and the dog’s ears twitched, clearly listening to him. It was enough to convince Bodhi. He shuffled uneasily forward and held out his hand. Kaytoo put his paw into Bodhi’s hand, and Bodhi shook it, feeling self-conscious. The top of the dog’s foot was smoothly hairy, the bottom rough skin. He let go, and Kaytoo’s expression changed again as he turned his face back toward Cassian, letting his tongue loll out in what was almost a grin this time, clearly pleased with himself.

“Good boy,” Cassian said, coming forward and patting the dog’s head on his way past. He looked phenomenal, as gorgeous as Bodhi had ever seen him-- the cold and the exertion of the hike had pinked his cheeks and nose and his eyes were sparkling and he was happy and looked as alive as Bodhi had ever seen him. 

“Hey,” Bodhi said, a little dumbstruck. 

Cassian grinned at him, and came closer, right into his space, sliding a hand around his back and tipping his face in to kiss Bodhi, right on the mouth, like he was certain nobody was watching. Caught off-guard, Bodhi went pliant, opening his mouth to the kiss a little bit, before pulling back.

“You’re a sap,” he said, and Cassian laughed. 

“You should have seen your face,” Cassian said, but it wasn’t said meanly, it was more sort of wondering. He pulled his glove off and ran his thumb across one of Bodhi’s cheekbones, smiling faintly at something. He lingered a moment, then turned and looked at the dog. “C’mon, Kaytoo! Check your paws.”

The dog got up and shook himself off, and Cassian bent and investigated each of the dog’s feet. Bodhi went and opened the back door of the car. He’d cleaned it out so there’d be room for the dog to ride there, and at Cassian’s suggestion had put down a towel and an old blanket, not that he was really worried about the seats getting dirty, but it wouldn’t hurt to have them. 

The dog leapt easily up into the seat and settled himself with a whuff of a sigh, looking somewhat put-upon. “You love car rides, Kaytoo,” Cassian said. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“How long can he go without a break?” Bodhi asked, getting into the car. Cassian unslung his backpack and set it in the footwell next to the dog. 

“Longer than me,” Cassian said. “He’s just had a good run, he should be all right.” He got into the passenger’s seat, and Bodhi started the car. “Are you ready for our first fight? What’s on the radio?”

“Don’t test me,” Bodhi said. “I have strong opinions on music.”

Cassian laughed at that, bright and joyful. “Of course you do,” he said. “I won’t really argue, I was just being an ass.”

 

They went down the highway in amiable conversation, Kaytoo flopping boredly around in the back and occasionally unnervingly shoving his nose between the seat and the door to sniff Bodhi’s shoulder or neck. (“Kay, sit,” Cassian would say sternly, and every time, Kay would whuff a sigh directly into Bodhi’s ear before complying. Bodhi got over being startled by it.) They spoke mostly about music, Cassian pretending to be an avid fan of Mexican folk music and telegraphing insincerity until Bodhi managed to randomly guess his actual tastes. They paused at a so-called scenic overlook on the highway, though in the dark nothing was visible beyond the pool of light from the street lamps, and Kaytoo bounded out eagerly for a game of fetch. 

“He’s a beautiful dog,” Bodhi said sincerely, watching the animal leap and twist his body in midair to seize the ball in his powerful jaws. 

“He really is,” Cassian said, transparently proud. Kaytoo came back and dropped the ball at Cassian’s feet, dancing excitedly. “Sit,” Cassian said sternly. Kaytoo put his butt down and came to attention. “Wait,” Cassian said. Kaytoo made a deep noise of displeasure in his chest, but stayed still. 

“He seems very well-trained,” Bodhi said. 

The dog’s eyes were fixed on the ball with a burning intensity that was a little unsettling. Cassian laughed. “He both is and is not,” he said. “He knows a lot of commands and how to execute them, but his obedience is entirely contingent on his analysis of the situation.” To the dog, he repeated, “Wait.”

He threw the ball, and Kaytoo watched it go in an agony of clear desire to go after it, but was obviously waiting for a command. The ball landed, and bounced on the concrete of the parking lot into a snowbank, and Kaytoo whined in clear frustration. 

“Go get it,” Cassian said, and Kaytoo tore off in such rapid pursuit that he sent snow flying everywhere. He launched himself into the snowbank and flailed around, but after a moment came up with the ball, and trotted back with a keen air of satisfaction.

“He’s good,” Bodhi said. 

“Top marks on all the physical tests,” Cassian said. “Just flunked out on obedience.”

Bodhi shook his head a little bit. “I guess we’re kindred spirits,” he said. “That was my problem too.” He kicked at a chunk of snow, and turned and went back toward the car. 

Kaytoo got back into the car only grudgingly, panting and soaked through from playing in the snow. Cassian was clearly having such a good time with him it almost seemed a shame to keep going, but Bodhi was hungry and also had depressed himself by comparing himself to the dog. 

They drove in companionable silence for a little bit, Bodhi deep in thought over whether to tell Cassian anything about his life in hopes of inspiring reciprocation. The question was whether he really wanted to know, or not. 

The real question was, did he want to find out how good Cassian was at lying, because he really didn’t think he’d learn much of substance. He suspected Cassian would be up-front about his need for secrecy, but decided he didn’t want to test that. He’d just committed to spending at least twenty-four hours in the man’s company, he’d rather not discover anything dealbreaking or awkward at least until the ride home. 

“So,” Cassian said suddenly, “I found a more informative website about Buddhism, and you’re right, they’re not all vegetarians, so that was interesting to read about.”   
“I quite like Buddhism,” Bodhi said. He decided not to volunteer anything else, though. “There’s a lot of different kinds.”

“I also read, like, the most basic introduction to Hinduism that I could find, but I am sure it’s more complicated than I realize,” Cassian went on.

“Really,” Bodhi said, “I’m not particularly observant, it’s all right.”

“I know, but I don’t like to be stupid about things,” Cassian said. 

“Are you Catholic?” Bodhi asked. “I don’t really know anything about Catholics but I know most Mexicans are.”

That got him a moment of quiet. “I am,” Cassian said. “I mean. I was. I mean. Sort of.”

“So we can trade knowledge, then,” Bodhi said. “Do you actually really think that you’re eating human flesh when you do the thing with the ritual cannibalism?”

Cassian laughed. “I see where you’re going with this.”

“No, I really want to know,” Bodhi said. “I mean, what does it taste like?”

“It tastes like Styrofoam,” Cassian said. “Or like. Some places use regular bread. But I mean-- I haven’t taken Communion since, like, high school.”

“And I don’t really like the taste of beef but have no particular objection to its proximity,” Bodhi said. “So like. We’re even. Case closed. Prosecution rests.” He slid Cassian a look.

“You’re supposed to go to Confession before you take Communion,” Cassian said. He had his feet on the dashboard, hands folded across his midsection. He looked sad, the planes of his face picked out by the running lights of a tractor trailer as they passed it. “I’ve been to Mass, kind of recently, but I don’t take Communion, because I haven’t confessed.”

Their exit was coming up, and Bodhi fished out his wallet and stuck it in the center console. “Toll,” he said. Cassian sat up and retrieved the ticket from the dashboard. “So you believe, then,” Bodhi said, after a moment.

Cassian sighed. “No,” he said. “Not really. But there’s such a comfort in faith, it would be nice if I could.” He held up the toll ticket and several dollars. “You’ll be getting thirty cents back,” he said. 

Bodhi took the toll money and navigated the exit. “Do we need directions to the motel?” Cassian asked. “I can look it up.”

“No,” Bodhi said, “I worked out the route. I thought we probably ought to stop to eat somewhere first.” Belatedly the complication surfaced in his mind: “Except. Oh. Most restaurants aren’t going to let a dog in.”

“No,” Cassian said, “but he’ll be all right in the car in this weather with his coat.”

 

They went through a built-up suburban area with strip malls and some gas stations, and found a diner Bodhi had scouted out last time he’d been over this way. The temperature hadn’t dropped much below freezing, they parked where they could see the car and cracked a window a little for Kaytoo, who looked mournfully at them. Bodhi tried not to stare too much at Cassian; the neon sign of the restaurant kept catching highlights in his hair and eyes as he laughed, and it was unfair how attractive it made him. 

Out here, Cassian didn’t bother changing his accent when the waitress was in earshot. Bodhi had wondered briefly whether the accent was genuine, but it did appear to be. It was thicker for some words, worn thinner in others, but always present.

Cassian spoke more freely out here, too. It was blindingly obvious that he’d entirely shed the Jeron personality for the duration. He was sharper, brighter, funnier, wittier, with more physical gestures and overall a great deal more animation. Bodhi had a feeling that if he had ever had an opportunity to observe him in full-on Jeron mode, among people who knew him exclusively in that identity, the difference would be still more marked. 

“What?” Cassian asked, after a pause; he’d caught Bodhi staring. 

Bodhi shook his head slightly. “You didn’t even bring Jeron along on this trip at all,” he said. 

Cassian smiled sadly. “I don’t really like him,” he said. 


	5. Kaytoo Is Helpful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The road trip unfolds, and K2 The Wonder Dog maybe tries too hard to be helpful.

 

“Hang on,” Bodhi said, “I need to mail something.”

Cassian laughed as Bodhi pulled into the parking lot. Bodhi was trying to act casual like he hadn’t been saving things in a box for two months waiting for a chance to be out of town to mail something, hadn’t chosen this route specifically to pass by a post office at a time it would be open. “What, the post office back home isn’t good enough?”

Bodhi shook his head wordlessly, and glanced over just in time to see Cassian figure it out. He had a moment where it occurred to him that Cassian had probably looked him up, and how much he’d discovered depended on what kind of resources he had access to. If he was law enforcement, probably a lot.

Didn’t bear thinking about, so Bodhi pushed it aside and retrieved the box from the trunk, where he’d had it half-hidden under his duffel and spare jacket. He already had it taped up, and his sister’s address neatly lettered on top. “You can stay here with K2,” he said. “I’ll just be a moment.”

He saw Cassian take in the name on top of the package, but couldn’t make out any reaction, whether Cassian knew who the name referred to or not. He never sent anything of consequence, but it was the only contact he allowed himself. Usually it was small toys and books for his sister’s kids, though it had lately occurred to him that if she’d had another since last he’d actually spoken to her, he wouldn’t know.

He stalked her Facebook, but she’d locked it down the week her older kid started kindergarten. Fortunately he’d saved that last photo, the little girl in pigtails beaming and holding a sign that said “First Day Of School!” and her little brother holding one that said “I Wanted A Sign Too”, and he had it in his phone still, but ever since then her page had displayed nothing beyond her profile picture, cropped from a photo Bodhi himself had taken of her at her wedding with the fancy camera he used to own.

This package had a pair of fluffy bunny slippers he’d found, luckily in her size, in the clearance bin at Target, because of a joke they’d shared as children. He’d written a note and tucked it inside the toe of one of the slippers, just saying that he hoped she was having better luck staying warm in this weather than he was.

He couldn’t give her any way to contact him in return, though, because he knew she’d turn it over to their parents, and he couldn’t face that, couldn’t face them.

It was like being a ghost, only sort of in reverse: he couldn’t see them, or know anything about them, but he could send them signals. He didn’t know her kids; they’d been so little when he’d left, they hadn’t had defined preferences yet. He never knew whether any of his gifts had been popular or ignored. His sister might just throw them away. But he still felt compelled do it, and was always collecting things to send, assorted little things in a basket in his closet. Every time he sent a package he thought he should stop doing this, and sometimes he even lasted a week or two without anything in that basket, but inevitably he’d see something perfect and pick it up before he remembered to think better of it, and then there he was again with a collection started, just waiting for his next trip far enough out of town.

(Thirty miles, was his threshhold. More than thirty miles from where he lived, he’d consider sending a package or dropping a postcard into a mailbox. But only eastward. He wouldn’t send one from westward, to keep anyone alert from triangulating. His sister was an engineer, after all; she could probably pinpoint his location with not a great deal of data.)

(If she cared to. He didn’t know if she would. It wasn’t worth the risk that she might. He wouldn’t let himself have that wistful bit of self-sabotage, of hoping she’d care to.)

 

He declined the insurance and paid the postage, and came back out. Cassian had K2 out of the car and was playing some game with him on the sidewalk, to the great entertainment of a pair of small children whose mother was standing resignedly by, laden with shopping bags.

“Be careful, kids,” she called out.

“Oh, he’s friendly,” Cassian said, “I’d’ve stopped him if it wasn’t safe!” He was so cheerful, so earnest and genuine.

If he had researched Bodhi maybe he knew how many children his sister had by now, would know if his father had had that heart attack like _his_ father had, would know--

 _Don’t ask_ , Bodhi told himself, desperately forlorn, but resolute.

“All set?” Cassian asked him, letting go of the bit of old rope he’d been playing tug-of-war with K2 with. One of the children seized it, and K2 shook his head and pulled, knocking the child over. The mother started forward in dismay, but the child leapt up, delighted, and snatched the rope, which K2 had instantly dropped.

K2’s ears and tail had both gone down, and he backed away from the child. “Leave it,” Cassian said, “come here,” and K2 came and sat at his feet, wary. “That’s enough playing for now, he’s worried he hurt you, are you okay?”

“C’mon, kids,” the mother said. “Give him back his toy.”

“Thanks,” Cassian said, bending down to the child’s level and holding his hand out for the drool-soaked toy. “Good boy, Kay,” he said, tousling the dog’s ears. The dog submitted patiently to a few pats from the children as they departed, and the mother didn’t even wait until they were out of sight before digging out her hand sanitizer with a sigh.

“Thanks for letting us play!” the older of the children lisped, after some sotto voce instruction from the mother.

“Oh,” Cassian said, “you’re welcome!”

Bodhi got back into the car instead of watching them go. They were older than his sister’s kids, probably. He occasionally did Internet searches to find out how big children got at what age, so he could maybe envision his sister’s kids now. Six and three. The average six-year-old was 102 cm tall. Both of these kids were taller than that.

He could maybe get one of his cousins to spy on her Facebook for him, but he just couldn’t risk the cousin passing on his email address to his father or someone. He just-- couldn’t.

This was how it was.

  


Kaytoo was exquisitely behaved at the motel. “Normally I’d let him tear around as a reward for being so well-behaved in the car,” Cassian said, “but he did get to play with those kids, and I don’t want them to pre-emptively kick us out of here.” He instead put a harness onto K2, who instantly went to perfectly-still attention at his side. “Good boy,” he said, “heel,” and K2 tucked himself up at his side.

 

The motel was definitely a Patel Motel: the woman behind the counter was an elderly Indian woman, round-faced and intimidating. She peered over the counter at K2. “Is he a service dog?” she asked doubtfully.

“He’s trained as one,” Cassian said, “but no, he’s just my dog.” He gave her a winning smile.

Unmoved, she “hm’d” to herself, going back to squint at the computer screen. “Mm, reservation… for… ah yes.” Cassian had already handed over a credit card. Bodhi hadn’t insisted; he didn’t have a credit card, and he knew firsthand how much more difficult a lot of things were without one. Including motel reservations. He’d had to resort to those prepaid ones a time or two, which was stupid, but it was how things worked.

Bodhi looked as disinterested as he could manage, but did not miss the woman’s furrowed-brow contemplation of him. She didn’t say anything to him, but kept her eyes on him intermittently through most of the rest of the transaction. She surely wasn’t from the same region of India as Bodhi’s family, wasn’t likely any more closely related to him than, say, a French person would be to any given German, but in this context, in this remote place, she was probably trying to figure out if she knew his family. He wasn’t going to encourage the line of thought: she probably didn’t know anyone he knew, but it would be a disaster if she did.

Either that or she was preoccupied with how ugly Bodhi’s hat was. That was also extremely likely.

(He kind of liked how he could blame a lot of the way people frowned at him on his hat. He might need to look into some similar kind of solution for warmer weather, because it was so convenient.)

They got the key card thing and went back out to the semi-detached little cabins that were the rooms. Kaytoo muscled forward and went into the room first, and Cassian let him.

He was clearing the room, Bodhi realized, and wondered what else the dog had been trained to do. Cassian went in just after him, warier than the circumstances warranted, his head tilted and his shoulders parallel to the wall. Was he humoring the dog? But he searched the room along with K2, and at the end, patted the dog and praised him. “Well done,” he said. “It’s all clear.”

“Do you just have to keep in practice, or do you really think the feds are after you here?” Bodhi asked curiously, shutting the door firmly behind himself and stopping to get his boots off. He hung up his jacket and picked his way into the room, dropping his bag onto the bed.

“Practice,” Cassian said, sunshine returning to his disposition as he came back to the door to take his shoes off. Not a total savage, then, Bodhi noted with some lightening of his earlier instinctive disapproval of wandering around a bedroom with shoes on. Cassian noticed, then, that there was only one bed. “Oh, I thought I reserved-- oh, that would maybe explain the looks she was giving us.”

Bodhi shrugged. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “You don’t take up that much room, there’s probably room for the dog too.”

Cassian laughed. “Oh, I gotta get Kay’s harness off,” he said, and K2 came over as if he’d been waiting for Cassian to say that.

Bodhi shifted his duffel onto the floor, and went and adjusted the thermostat-- it was freezing in here. Once he had it adjusted he turned around to see that, freed from his harness, Kaytoo was bounding around the room.

“Settle down, goofball,” Cassian said, and Kaytoo jumped onto the bed, sniffing all around with great interest. When his investigation was complete he came up to Bodhi, clearly intent on getting a better smell-picture of him.

“Yikes,” Bodhi said, but controlled his startled flinch.

“I thought you said you didn’t mind dogs,” Cassian said. He had his backpack on the chair and was rummaging through it.

“I don’t,” Bodhi said, “but I’m not used to them either.”

“Just let him sniff your hands,” Cassian said, “he just wants to get to know you.”

Bodhi gave his hands to the dog, who studied them with some interest, then moved on, bounding off of the bed to go sniffing into the bathroom.

Bodhi went and sat down on the bed. “So uh,” he said. “I feel like it’s weird to have sex with the dog watching. Is it weird?”

Cassian laughed. “I mean,” he said. “I have before. Generally he’s just not interested, although if you play too rough he gets concerned.”

“Huh,” Bodhi said dubiously. Kaytoo came back over to him, apparently delighted that his face was lower now so he could investigate in more detail.

“Down, down,” Cassian said, and something in Spanish. Kaytoo, unconcerned, took his time sniffing Bodhi’s ear, until Cassian came over and bodily pushed him away. “Mine,” Cassian said, and wrapped his arms around Bodhi.

Bodhi laughed. “I was going to say, well, I mean, if he’s more interested,” and then Cassian kissed him so he shut up.

As Cassian had predicted, the dog lost interest, and wandered off.

They passed an agreeable span of time just making out, getting steadily more and more intense. Either the heat in the room came up or Bodhi was too turned-on to care; they discarded clothing and rolled around. “We’re in for the night, yeah?” Cassian asked, tugging at Bodhi’s shirt.

Bodhi laughed. It wasn’t late, maybe 8:30, but they were both early risers. “I have no further plans to go anywhere tonight,” he said. “What, did you want to go out to a bar or something? I’d rather stay in and fuck.”

Cassian got his shirt off him and sat for a moment looking at him like he was a present he’d just unwrapped. “I think we’re on the same page,” he said. Then he paused. “Wait, do Hindus drink?”

Bodhi grimaced, then frowned at him. “Wrong question,” he said.

Cassian was distracted-looking, pretty and flushed, mouth all swollen from kissing, but he blinked, and almost immediately said, “Oh. Oh! Right. Do _you_ drink?”

“Thank you,” Bodhi said, rolling his eyes a little. He sat up. “Not often, but I do. I just never really developed my palate at all, so I’ve really no taste, but it’s more a question of never getting around to it than particularly objecting to it.”

“I wondered,” Cassian said. “I brought a little bit of nice stuff with me but then, you didn’t have any in your apartment, and I didn’t have time to research and find out of that was like, a thing.”

“It’s not a thing,” Bodhi said. “It’s just not a budget priority. Why, do you drink a lot?”

“Not a lot,” Cassian said, a little defensively. “I like to, but if I try to keep anything in the house the other guys drink it all up. That’s all.”

“Oh,” Bodhi said. “I mean, nice stuff is probably wasted on me.”

“Nonsense,” Cassian said, and went back to his knapsack, pulling out a small bottle in a paper bag. “I got really excited when I saw they had this in the big liquor store in town.”

“Mezcal,” Bodhi said. “What’s that?”

It mostly tasted like being on fire, it turned out, but unlike Bodhi’s college experiences of being expected to swallow the burny stuff as fast as possible for maximum devastation, Cassian wanted him to barely moisten his lips with it to maximally appreciate the horrifying burning. This took some doing, and there was a great deal of merriment, and some more making out, but it had the appreciated side effect of not leading to any noticeable intoxication, which Bodhi had been a little worried about. He had very little experience at handling himself well under the influence, and didn’t really want to complicate things.

“See,” Cassian said, a glorious and slightly breathless picture now in a threadbare undershirt and boxer briefs, “now you’re getting used to it, it’s pretty good, right?”

Bodhi laughed. “It’s more that my tongue is numb, I think,” he said.

“No, no,” Cassian said. “I’ll make a true Mexican of you yet.”

“I keep thinking I ought to learn some Spanish,” Bodhi said. “People here assume I’m Hispanic all the time, it’s inexplicable.”

“It’s because all the most beautiful people are Latinos,” Cassian said. “They just see you and assume.” He put the bottle down and wrapped his fingers around Bodhi’s jaw, pulling him in to kiss him again. They rolled around a little while longer, and Bodhi got Cassian’s shirt off him.

Finally Cassian sat up, breathing hard, and said, “I think you should fuck me.”

“I,” Bodhi said articulately, “okay.”

Cassian’s response to this was to throw himself out of bed, which wasn’t really what Bodhi had expected-- or Kaytoo, who started up from the bed he’d made himself on Cassian’s parka-- but before he could come up with a response, Cassian had dug through his backpack and come back with a small paper bag, which he upended, spilling out-- ah, a handful of assorted condoms and a bottle of lube. “I went to that awful sketchy truck stop Adult Store,” Cassian said, grinning, and Bodhi laughed.

“I’ve never dared go in there,” he said. Kaytoo came over to investigate, and Cassian fended him off absently.

“It’s awful,” Cassian said, “and almost everything in it is terrible, especially the clerk, but they did have some useful things.” He held up one of the little foil packages. “Including flavored ones, because fake strawberry is better than rubber at least.” He threw most of the condoms back into the bag, but left one, which was presumably rubber-flavored, absent any other designation, and set the bag on the nightstand. Kaytoo sniffed at it, but immediately realized he was uninterested, and went and lay back down.

Moment of truth. “I, ah,” Bodhi said. “I haven’t, ah. Done this before.”

Cassian blinked at him, eyes wide and mouth a little open. “This like-- what, any of it?”

“No,” Bodhi said, “just-- with a man.”

“Oh,” Cassian said. He chewed on his lower lip for a moment. “I, ah, actually, me neither.”

“Oh,” Bodhi said. He grimaced. “Hm. Well, how difficult could it be, really?”

Cassian laughed, and leaned in and kissed him, which Bodhi was happy to take as a distraction, but after a moment Cassian pulled away a little and pushed Bodhi’s hair back away from his face-- his hairtie was gone, somewhere, inconveniently. “I mean, I haven’t with a man,” Cassian said. “But I have--”

“I’ve had sex with a woman,” Bodhi said. “I’m familiar with the concept.”

“Me too,” Cassian said. “But I mean-- this specifically.” And he was already flushed enough, from arousal or maybe it was quite warm in here, but the indirectness of his gaze suggested that he was blushing too, on top of that. “I-- my ex, she had-- she really liked to-- ah--” He trailed off, gesturing vaguely.

“I’m not going to laugh at you,” Bodhi said gently, exaggeratedly so, partly because he knew it would amuse Cassian to be spoken to gently. “You can tell me. It’s all right.”

As Bodhi had expected, Cassian laughed. “You _ass_ ,” he said, and Bodhi had to kiss him, because he was so pretty when he was laughing. Some of the appeal was that it was so clearly an uncharacteristic expression for him; he laughed so much in Bodhi’s presence, but it was clear it wasn’t something he did much the rest of the time. Bodhi wasn’t sure how he knew that, but he did.

“I’m completely sincere,” Bodhi said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about how my ex-girlfriend used to fuck me,” Cassian said. “So I’ve specifically done this before, just not _exactly_ exactly this.”

“Oh,” Bodhi said, because that really wasn’t what he’d thought Cassian was trying to get at. “Oh, so, you mean-- you _specifically_ know how _this_ works.” Then, because he was pretty sure he knew, but not totally sure, he said, “When you say she used to--”

“She had a, ah,” Cassian gestured vaguely again, uninformatively. “In a harness thing, that she’d wear, and it was-- listen, I’m not describing it as compellingly as I ought to, but take my word for it, it was really great.”

“Huh,” Bodhi said, trying to envision it. “You know, I’d only ever heard of that as, like, a punchline, or I guess a really kinky thing?”

“It’s not particularly kinky,” Cassian said. “I have tried kinky, it is not really my thing. But this is-- _this_ is _really_ my thing. It wasn’t-- she wasn’t, like, pretending to be a man or anything, she just really liked to fuck me, and I really liked it when she did.”

“Huh,” Bodhi said again.

“Not that it would have been weird if she _had_ been pretending, or anything,” Cassian added awkwardly. He sounded distressed. “You gotta react, man, you gotta give me something to go on here, don’t look at me like that.”

“I’m not-- I can’t just react on command like that,” Bodhi said, “I’m having my worldview expanded, it takes a lot of attention. I hadn’t quite recognized how sheltered I was.”

“ _I’m_ expanding _your_ worldview,” Cassian said. “Really?” He squinted incredulously, crinkling his nose, and Bodhi realized Cassian must think of him as worldly or well-traveled, somehow, must think of him as more than he really was.

“I live a very small life,” Bodhi said, a little sadly, “with not much in it really, it doesn’t take much to show me something I’ve never seen before.” It was more vulnerable than he’d planned on getting, just now, and he exhaled with a subdued kind of resignation, folding himself a little smaller.

“Bodhi,” Cassian said, and caught his jaw, hand curling alongside his neck, pulling him up to kiss him tenderly. “Oh-- Bodhi, you’re-- no, you’re really exceptional, you know that? It doesn’t-- no, come here.” He cradled Bodhi’s face in both hands and kissed him, over and over, little soft kisses. Bodhi sort of resisted at first, but his baseline level of arousal was way too high to maintain any kind of cool for long, and after a moment he was pretty well putty in Cassian’s hands.

Cassian pulled back and it took Bodhi a moment to work his eyes open again. It wasn’t just that he was turned-on and his whole body was tingling, his blood pounding and his nerves sparkling, but he was also so warm, all the way through, lit-up and floaty. Cassian was staring at him, heavy-lidded, clearly in a similar state. His face was flushed, down over his sharp shoulders and across his chest. He was only wearing underpants, pulled low on his skinny hips by the pressure of his erection. He had the kind of body Bodhi had grown up fascinated with-- lanky, lean, like the boys in late-90s underwear advertisements, messy long hair and flannel and expanses of soft-looking pale skin with no fat punctuated here and there by sharp bone and sparse body hair. The bulky ostentatious muscles so fashionable in porn had never done much to catch Bodhi’s attention, nor the exaggeratedly-slim, almost feminine “twink” aesthetic that seemed to be the only other allowable type in porn, but he’d always been a little hypnotized by this sort of smooth-sharp beauty, unmistakably masculine, unmistakably full-grown.

It had taken him a long time to sort out that _desire_ was what that fascination was. In fact he’d never really quite sorted it out, entirely, until now. He _wanted_ , more acutely than he’d wanted anything in as long as he could remember, and it took him a moment to reconnect his body to his impulses, and remember that he could, in fact, and had express permission, to _have_.

“So, uh,” Bodhi said, mouth clumsy, hands clumsy, but he already had his hands on Cassian’s waist, so he moved them, touching Cassian’s body, feeling where he was as soft as he looked and where there was firm muscle underneath his warm skin. “How, uh.”

Cassian laughed softly. He was beautiful, but the thing was, there was no one thing you could really point to as beautiful in his face. He was a collection of sharp edges and flat planes that should not have been beautiful but were. Was it the darkness of his eyes? They weren’t particularly large or luminous, but they were beautiful, by the way they moved, by the spark of something in them, deep and bright all at once. His nose wasn’t straight and wasn’t hooked and wasn’t curved, but it was all three of those things depending on the angle. His mouth was thin and wide but nimble and curving and knew more than you without being mean about it. His cheekbones were sharp but not like a model, not aggressively beautiful; they just were. His jaw was magnificent, strong and sharp and more expressive than a hunk of bone had any right to be. Something about all the angles of his face just lined up to create a whole that was compelling beyond any of its parts.

“Come here,” Cassian said, and pulled Bodhi close and kissed him. “It’s easy. I’ll show you.”

It was easy, it was amazing. Bodhi had never felt so powerfully connected to another person as he did now, as Cassian’s body opened to his fingers under Cassian’s guidance. He’d watched the other man’s composure come undone before, but it was different this time, face to face with the lights on, feeling every tremor that went through Cassian’s body.

“Now, now,” Cassian said, breathing hard, “your cock, c’mon, _fuck_.”

It was almost too much right away, Cassian’s body was so hot and so tight and Bodhi had never felt quite like this before, but what saved him was that Cassian made this high-pitched series of little gasping exhalations, and Kaytoo thought he was in distress and came over and shoved his snout between the two of them. They were sort of crosswise in the bed, Cassian on his back with his head right at the edge of the mattress, so it wasn’t difficult for Kay to reach him.

“Kay,” Cassian said, recovering coherence with some difficulty, “no, Kay, get off,” and Bodhi collapsed in laughter, though he managed to do so without losing his place.

“It’s all right, Kay,” Bodhi said, “I promise I’m not hurting him.” One of his hands was pretty clean, so he disentangled it from whichever of Cassian’s limbs it was wrapped around, and brought it up to pat the dog’s head reassuringly.

“Stupid dog,” Cassian said ruefully, collecting himself with an effort to push at Kay’s snout. He shivered, and Bodhi bit his lip at how strange and amazing it felt, to feel Cassian’s body moving from the inside.

“He’s just loyal,” Bodhi said, managing to form words. “I think it’s sweet.”

“Maybe it’s sweet,” Cassian said, “but I’m a lot more interested in getting laid. Kay, down. Go lay down.” He managed to collect himself enough to do a commanding voice, which made Bodhi giggle at the incongruousness of it all.

The dog sighed, resigned again, and went back to the bed he’d made himself from Cassian’s parka. He settled himself with a little grumble, and Bodhi giggled again. “I guess you’re not allowed to make any noises,” he said.

“Fuck,” Cassian said, “that’s half the fun.”

“A full half, though,” Bodhi said. “Really?” and he rocked his hips against Cassian’s. Cassian swallowed a little moan and wrapped his hand around the back of Bodhi’s neck. “Shh,” Bodhi said, grinning as he kept up his motion.

“Just you-- try not making any-- oh-- noise,” Cassian said, but gave up on speech as Bodhi kept moving. His fingers dug convulsively at Bodhi’s shoulders; clearly it was working for him.

“How’d that book go?” Bodhi asked, a little breathless. “With the naughty schoolboys? Did anybody ever have to stay quiet while they were getting fucked, or the house warden would find them and they’d get expelled?”

Cassian murmured something really fervent in Spanish that Bodhi figured didn’t require translation, and it was so hot Bodhi had to kiss him. He pulled back to breathe, though, after a moment, and murmured, “Can you do it? Can you keep quiet? Or do I have to shut you up?”

He punctuated this by fucking Cassian harder, and the other man caught his breath and made a faint whimpering noise, choked-off. Bodhi laughed in delight and slid his hand across Cassian’s mouth, pinning him down and keeping up the pace. Cassian’s eyes went wide and rolled back a little, his whole body undulating as he arched his back in clear pleasure. “Fuck,” Cassian whimpered against Bodhi’s hand.

“Shh,” Bodhi said again, right into Cassian’s ear. Cassian shuddered, clearly profoundly into it, but managed not to make a sound. “There’s a good boy,” Bodhi murmured. He was getting pretty into this too. “You can take it harder, can’t you? You can keep your mouth shut no matter how hard I fuck you.”

Cassian shuddered, and nodded, eyes glazed and distant, fingers clenching convulsively on the backs of Bodhi’s shoulders. He was breathing hard and raggedly, but made no sound beyond his breath catching.

Bodhi wasn’t sure how long he was going to be able to keep this up, but he gave it everything he had, panting little words of praise and exhortations to stay quiet into Cassian’s ear as he fucked him for all he was worth. It really wasn’t like anything he’d done before, not really, not with Cassian’s long legs wrapped around him and hard cock straining against his belly.

He collected himself enough to slide the hand that wasn’t over Cassian’s mouth down between their bodies, finding Cassian’s dick and stroking it experimentally. Yeah, that was-- that was different. Cassian made a helpless little choking noise and shuddered, hard, and then he was coming, gasping and shuddering, clenching powerfully around Bodhi’s cock, and he gave up and cried out as the rebounding wave of it shook him.

Bodhi was only sort of dimly aware of what happened then as his own climax took him, but somewhere in the midst of it he became aware that Kaytoo had bounded over again because of the noises Cassian was making, and Bodhi fended off the dog’s questing snout as he hitched and shivered into Cassian’s shaking body, laughing and gasping and shuddering, all wracked with orgasm and amusement at the same time.

“Get the fuck off me, Kay,” Cassian said breathlessly, panting. “That’s it, next time I’m locking you in the bathroom.”

For some reason the dog thought this was great, and wagged his tail, excitedly redoubling his assault with his tongue on both of their faces. Bodhi buried his face in Cassian’s neck.

“I told you to stay quiet,” he said, giggling as Kaytoo licked his ear. “Now we’re gonna get expelled.”

Cassian laughed. “We are _not_ going to roleplay that my _dog_ is the strict headmaster.”

“Good,” Bodhi said, “I wasn’t really willing to go there with you.”

Cassian sputtered and wriggled as Kaytoo got him with his tongue, and laughed. “Down,” he said, struggling to sound serious enough for the dog to listen. “Down!”

Kaytoo let up, and Bodhi pulled his head out of the crook of Cassian’s neck to look up. Cassian was flushed and sparkling, and met Bodhi’s regard with a shy little grin. “You,” he said, “I’d rather,” and kissed Bodhi.

“I’d hope my breath is better than his,” Bodhi said, once he had a moment to speak.

“I’m just not into him in the same way,” Cassian confessed.

“The poor fellow,” Bodhi said. He kissed Cassian again, and carefully pulled out of him. Cassian made another little noise and got mobbed by Kaytoo for his trouble.

“This fucking dog,” he said, but he was laughing. Bodhi threw the condom away, washed his hands, and grabbed one of the washcloths and dampened it, bringing it back and handing it to Cassian to tidy up with. Kaytoo had climbed up and was wagging his tail, having crawled most of the way across Cassian’s legs on his belly with his hind legs trailing behind over the edge of the bed. He looked extremely pleased with himself.

“You didn’t really think I was hurting him,” Bodhi said to the dog, sitting down. He didn’t know very much about dogs, but he could guess that anyone who really hurt Cassian would regret it pretty promptly. He ruffled the dog’s ears. “You really didn’t think for an instant that I was hurting him. You just wanted to help.”

“What a pest,” Cassian said. “I really mean it, I’ll lock him in the bathroom.”

“I thought you said he didn’t pay any attention,” Bodhi pointed out.

“He didn’t used to,” Cassian said. He sighed. “I guess he was really only in the room when we went camping, and usually we didn’t bring any, you know, _equipment_ when we went camping, so…”

Kaytoo yawned and crawled farther onto the bed before flopping over. “So you only make those noises when you get fucked,” Bodhi filled in.

Cassian laughed again, low and slightly sheepish. “Well? It feels different!”

“I imagine so,” Bodhi said.

“Yeah,” Cassian said, and yawned too. He shivered. “That was really good.”

Bodhi laughed. “Good to know,” he said. “I thought so too.” He was feeling sort of buzzy and raw-edged, gently but not unpleasantly unraveled. He came and lay down next to Cassian, who rolled over and put his head on Bodhi’s chest. Bodhi put his hand in Cassian’s hair while Cassian wrestled Kaytoo to retrieve the blankets from underneath him. Defeated at hogging the blankets, Kaytoo wriggled in between them, and flopped his head into Bodhi’s lap. Bodhi laughed, and put his other hand on the dog’s head to pet him too.

“I tried to give her K2 when we broke up,” Cassian said. “I knew I was going to come on this job and I thought it was too dangerous to take him, but she refused.”

“Had you been serious, then?” Bodhi asked. He’d resolved not to ask Cassian any personal questions, so it was interesting that he was volunteering.

“Almost a year,” Cassian said. “I don’t know how serious she was. I hadn’t meant to be as serious as I was.”

Bodhi pulled his fingers gently through Cassian’s hair, which was soft and fine and very straight. “Did you break it off, or did she?”

“We both did,” Cassian said. “It wasn’t-- she was very angry, about a lot of things, all the time, and she thought I should be angry about things, she was angry on my behalf. I didn’t-- I’ve worked hard, in my life, not to be trapped by things like that, and she couldn’t understand it. And, I mean, maybe she was right; I don’t mean to be one of those assholes whose exes are always crazy. She wasn’t crazy. But I couldn’t live like she wanted me to.”

“Are you still friends?” Bodhi asked, genuinely curious. He’d never had a relationship be anything like serious, he wouldn’t know how to go about even describing one.

Cassian laughed softly, a bitter little sound. “I don’t have friends,” he said. He let that sit for a moment, and finally added, “It’s why I’m in this line of work. I can disappear on a job for six months, a year, maybe forever, and nobody will come looking inconveniently.”

“She wouldn’t care if you died,” Bodhi filled in, frowning, working his fingers down to massage Cassian’s scalp.

“People would care,” Cassian said, softly. “It’s not that nobody would care. But nobody would really be surprised.”

Bodhi considered the very real fact that if anything happened to him, there’d be no way for anyone to find his next of kin or notify anyone. He wondered what would happen if he were in a coma or something. There’d be nobody to tell them to shut off the machines.

Well, it wouldn’t be his problem, so it wasn’t really worth worrying about.

“What’s her name?” Bodhi asked idly, more to see if Cassian would tell him than anything else.

“Jyn,” Cassian said.

“Jen?” It was a more commonplace name than Bodhi had expected.

“No,” Cassian said. “Jyn. With a y in the middle. It wasn’t short for anything.”

Bodhi considered that. “Was she Asian?” he asked. It wasn’t a name in any of the languages he knew, but that didn’t mean much.

Cassian laughed. “No,” he said. “White. Her family was Scandinavian or something, she was British, I’ve no idea if her name was traditional or made up or what. I never asked.”

“Huh,” Bodhi said. “I think, for no reason, I’m going to guess random things about her. She was… let’s see, she was taller than you and blonde.”

Cassian laughed. “No,” he said. “Five-threeish, dark hair, blue eyes. Little. Of all things you could be picking my brain about, this is where you’re putting your attention?”

Bodhi sighed, and pulled his fingers gently through Cassian’s soft hair again. “I already know you’ve got a whole false identity,” he said. “What good is it going to be for me to try to pick at that? I know you’re being careless about me and I don’t need to exacerbate that. So, yeah, I’m going to ask you about inconsequential stuff you’ve got no reason to need to hide from me.” He leaned over a little, tilting his head to look at Cassian’s face.

“Oh,” Cassian said. He blinked up at Bodhi, expression rueful. “I knew you were smart but I wasn’t really letting myself think that through.”

“And somehow you knew my neighbor Baze,” Bodhi said. “Chirrut might have missed that because he’s blind, but I don’t have that excuse.”

“I don’t _know_ him,” Cassian said, with particular emphasis.

“I don’t care,” Bodhi said. “And I don’t want to know. I know enough to know that my ignorance won’t save me, but knowing more won’t save me either. So I’d rather go back to talking about your ex-girlfriend because that seems safer. How’d you meet her?”

Cassian sighed, adjusting his position a little so that he could pet Kaytoo’s shoulder. “Work,” he said, sounding subdued. “We met through work, we mostly worked together, we broke up because of work.”

“So she was short and British with dark hair,” Bodhi said. “Is that your type, or something?”

Cassian laughed, and rolled his head a few degrees to look up at Bodhi. “You’re not that short,” he said.

“I’m pretty short,” Bodhi said.

“There’s not much of a resemblance,” Cassian said. “Her hair was shorter than yours.”

“Tits were probably bigger,” Bodhi said.

Cassian laughed, then retrieved his hand from Kaytoo to reach up and grope at Bodhi’s chest. “Not much,” he said. “I mean. Truly beautiful girl, I had no complaints, but not much of her going spare in any direction, you know?”

Bodhi had to laugh at that. Kaytoo grumbled and flopped farther up in Bodhi’s lap, and Cassian went back to petting him. “Yes, your highness,” Cassian said to the dog, “of course, your highness.”

“I’m petting him too,” Bodhi said, “it’s not like he’s being neglected.”

“In another life Kaytoo was a princess,” Cassian said.

“Have you had him since he was a puppy?” Bodhi asked. Since he was getting answers to stuff, and not being asked anything in return, he felt like he should continue the streak.

“Sort of,” Cassian said. He ruffled the dog’s ears, then scritched more forcefully with both hands at the loose skin at the base of the dog’s neck, where it met his shoulders. Kay half-closed his eyes and looked pleased. “I mean. I might have sabotaged his training so I could keep him.”

“No,” Bodhi said, delighted.

“I didn’t mean to, if I did,” Cassian said. “But-- I just-- I taught him a few things on the sly, and I really didn’t mean for it to happen but I think I kind of. Reprogrammed him, kind of? I really didn’t mean to.”

“Sure you didn’t,” Bodhi said. Kay opened his eyes and regarded Bodhi with an uncannily knowing look, as if he understood what was being discussed.

Cassian yawned, and slid farther down in Bodhi’s lap, drowsy. “Is it pathetic if I want to just fall asleep now?”

“No,” Bodhi said, moving his fingers in small firm circles at the nape of Cassian’s neck. Cassian made a quiet, satisfied little noise and leaned into Bodhi’s hand. “Big plans for tomorrow.”

“Mm,” Cassian said, and yawned again. “Breakfast out, find a good grocery store, go to the park, lunch somewhere-- oh, blowjobs, definitely.”

“Those are big plans,” Bodhi agreed. Cassian’s speech was getting blurry, and he yawned again.

“Mmm,” Cassian agreed. He really was falling asleep, so Bodhi extricated himself, brushed his teeth and put on a shirt and shorts to sleep in before coming back and shoving Cassian over so he could get into the bed. Cassian mumbled at him, still not quite all the way asleep, and wriggled into his arms, all soft skin and sharp bones and smelling delightfully of man’s deodorant and sex.

“You’re being stupid about me,” Bodhi said quietly, as he turned the light out, because he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

“I had to do something dumb and self-destructive,” Cassian mumbled. “It was either you or booze.” He yawned, breathed deep, and rolled over in the dark, rubbing his face, waking up a little. “Bodhi,” he said, nearly whispering. “After this I think you should leave town. I can get you out, I know people who can help you start over somewhere else.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Bodhi said. “What, just because of you?”

“No,” Cassian said. There was silence for a moment, and Kay broke it by groaning and stretching, trying to wriggle his way between them. “No, Bodhi, Krennic’s involved in some extremely bad things and he’s going to try to frame you, I think.”

“I know that,” Bodhi said.

“Then you have to get out,” Cassian said. “And I can help you do that.”

Bodhi considered it a moment. “Maybe we should talk about this in daylight,” he said.

Cassian laughed softly. “I was going to put it off until the drive back,” he said.

Bodhi sighed. “Maybe that would be the best idea,” he said.

Cassian leaned in and kissed him, missing Bodhi’s mouth and getting his jaw instead, maybe on purpose. “Probably,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jyn insisted on being in this story and that was what she wanted to do, I don't make the rules.  
> ... Has anyone written that fic, by the way, because I would read that fic.

**Author's Note:**

> One slightly-spoilery note, because I know I'd find it hard to read if I didn't know this: Cassian is presumably part of a Mexican drug-smuggling cartel, which is gross and tropey and stereotypical, and, here's the spoiler, it's not really a cartel, that's the cover story that another far more sinister organization is using. So if it skeeves you out, know this: it's going to be revealed as, in actuality, worse evil using the stereotype as a cover story. It was all less-fraught when I came up with it, back in the halcyon days of 2016 when we thought we knew what evil was. I'm still going to go ahead and tell this story in the meantime, but I'm uncomfortably aware that it may not work as I intended because the stakes are suddenly so much obviously higher in the reality I was making this out to be set in.  
> Also, obviously, Cassian is not who he appears to be, but I feel like he actually makes that pretty explicit from pretty early on, so. I will leave the revelation of his true identity and purpose to the text of the story, and hope that it is obvious that he is not genuinely a mob enforcer for a cartel.  
> (The canon character is such a beautiful example of moral purity in the face of hard choices; know that I would not assassinate his character by implying that he would ever genuinely compromise his own morals. Just as in canon, he has to do terrible things, but he does them in an untarnished belief in his cause. It's just, this story is told from Bodhi's POV almost exclusively, so it's not always obvious what Cassian's motivations are.)


End file.
